In his sermon, 'How the Church Should Act Around A Courtship,' Jonathan Sides discusses the role of the church community in supporting couples during courtship. He highlights the lack of cultural guidance on biblical marriage and emphasizes the church's responsibility to foster an environment that reflects the Gospel through marriage. Sides stresses that courtship is a process, not a commitment, and warns against treating it as a marriage contract. He identifies seven potential pitfalls for churches, such as gossip, pressuring courtships to progress too quickly, and assuming a one-size-fits-all approach. Sides uses biblical examples to illustrate the importance of friends and family in supporting a couple's journey. He concludes by connecting marriage to theological doctrines, urging the church to support couples in applying their faith. The sermon encourages open discussions about expectations and support, advocating for a community that refrains from gossip and promotes prayer and direct communication with those involved in courtships.

So I have an idea. I know a lot of you from our time together at the Old Hope. I'm assuming things still work the same here. I've got an idea that you guys probably know pretty well how to help somebody out who's got a baby, a new baby, or has gone through an adoption, if somebody gets sick, particularly ill, you have an idea of how the church can rally around and help. If somebody loses a home or loses a job or moves in from out of town, my guess is that Sovereign Redeemer is pretty well equipped and pretty knowledgeable about what needs to be done for these people who are in need.

My question is, do we as a church know how to help somebody who's trying to get married? In other words, there are many situations where we have some idea or other about how to love our brothers and sisters as ourselves. When two families begin investigating if it would be a good and proper match for this young man and that young lady to get married, do we know how to love those families and that couple, or do we sin against them in our ignorance? I'm going to assume that pretty much everybody here, and I don't know all of you, but I'm going to assume that pretty much everybody here has heard one or six talks on courtship at some point. That's how you end up at a church like this.

I'm going to assume that you've heard about how courtship is not dating, how to conduct yourself in a courtship, and how to guide your children through the same. We definitely need those talks. They're absolutely essential. There's absolutely nothing that I know of being produced by the culture out there to help our children get married in a biblical way. I don't know of anything that our culture is producing that is properly shaping the romantic imaginations of our children.

I know from the time that I spent at the university of not one single couple who wasn't within the church. I don't know of a single couple who got married without living together, some for significant years. I don't know of a single movie or television show that actively or even consistently honors chastity much less emotional purity. And things are so bad that there was a New York Times article a couple years ago even, and the idea has been repeated several times, that secular authors have even gotten to the point that they are lamenting the good old days of dating, because things are so bad in the culture that people don't even date anymore. And so here we are, we're trying to propose something completely new and different.

And it's really an old thing. But it's something that the culture is so far off their radar that they've got nothing to offer to us. They have nothing that we can glean from and no help. So we're going to have to rally around as a church. But I'm not going to give you that talk.

I'm not going to give you a talk about how to do a courtship. Those talks all address either the young man or the young woman involved in the courtship and the parents responsible for those young people. So I'm going to give you a courtship talk where I don't tell you how to evaluate a suitor. I don't tell you how to approach the parents of a young lady. I don't tell you how to guide your children through these kinds of things.

Those are the other courtship talks. So if you thought that you could come here and listen to a talk on courtship but hey, you know, none of my kids are that age or I'm not ready for that and you could just tune out, you're exactly the kind of people that this talk is for. This is the courtship talk for everybody else. This talk is a courtship for everyone who is not immediately involved in a courtship in any way at all, except as friends and bystanders. That's the title for our talk, is Courtship for Everyone Else.

Today's question is not, how should you conduct yourself when you are in a courtship, or how do I lead my son or daughter through a courtship, but Rather, how should a church, and me as a member of a church, conduct herself when a courtship is happening in our midst? When you look at scripture, scripture often uses the theme of friends of the unmarried. In the Old Testament, for example, you've got good examples and bad examples. You have the good example of Abraham sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac. You have the bad example, when Samson got married, of his best man who took his wife when Samson left in an angry huff.

In the New Testament you find John the Baptist, the forerunner, who calls himself the friend of the bridegroom. This is the way the man who's going to tell the world about Jesus describes himself. He's a friend of a bridegroom. And then when Jesus actually starts teaching, you have numerous parables about weddings. And the parables about weddings are often about the people who are attending, the friends of the bride and the bridegroom.

Matthew 22, you have the parable of the wedding feast. None of the people who were invited would come, and when they got other people to come, not everyone was dressed like they should have been. Or Matthew 25, you have the parable of the wedding feast. None of the people who were invited would come. And when they got other people to come, not everyone was dressed like they should have been.

Or Matthew 25, you have the parable of the 10 virgins. Some were prepared and some weren't. So friends and relatives of the bride and the bridegroom are themes that show up throughout scripture. When you look in Song of Solomon, I think we can go there and we can find two errors that we want to avoid as a church, as friends of the bride and the bridegroom. First, you could look near the end of the book, chapter 8 verses 8 and 9.

The brothers of the bride say this, they say, we have a little sister, and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day when she is spoken for. If she is a wall, we will build upon her a battlement of silver, and if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar." So you see a form of protectiveness here, but not the kind of protection that the Bible requires for a woman. The brothers are incapable of seeing their sister as mature enough to be given in marriage, and they decide instead that they're going to box her up. On the other hand, you have the bride talking to her friends, and she reminds them three times actually throughout the entire book.

She uses the exact same phrase, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. Chapters 2, 3, and 8. So you see all of these examples that go through scripture, talking about friends of the bride and the bridegroom. So it would be useful for us to reflect on this. But it's even more useful when you think about where all of us are headed, we hope.

Where all of us should aim to be headed. Revelation 19, starting in verse 6. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia! For the Lord God on nipotent reins, let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Then he said to me, Right, Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true sayings of God. It is a great mystery here that in some sense when you get to the marriage supper of the Lamb, We are both the bride, we are the church made ready, and yet we're also the friends of the bride, those invited there who get to partake of the feast. So throughout Scripture you see friends of the bride and the bridegroom are important. We should think about, as a church, how are we going to be friends of people who are in the process of getting married but not married yet?

Why bother? What's really at stake? Ephesians 5 makes it inescapably plain that marriages picture the gospel. So when people in a church start pursuing marriage what they're doing for us is they're actually beginning to show us and the world their own particular picture of the Gospel. The young couple is not merely trying to determine if they will bring each other maximum personal happiness, but they are beginning to explore completely new and foreign ways of sharing the Gospel with the watching world.

This is what happens when a young man looks at a young woman and says, maybe her. Is you have an opportunity for the world to see a picture of the Gospel that it's never seen before. Because you have these two particular people that are not like anybody else. And yet, Ephesians 5 says this is a picture of the gospel. Ensuring that every expression of the gospel is presented clearly and purely is among the chief ends of the church.

I'll repeat that one. Ensuring that every expression of the gospel is presented clearly and purely is among the chief ends of the church. Therefore, it is in the church's interest. It is even the Church's work to intentionally foster an environment where the Gospel is presented clearly and purely. And if we want to talk about marriages as being expressions of the Gospel, then it follows that It is in the Church's interest and work to intentionally foster an environment where a young man and young woman can look at each other and answer the question, if we are to be married, would our marriage accurately reflect the Gospel?

The world offers us nothing here. They offer us nothing to look at to answer those kinds of questions. And the Church should be seeking to bring every thought captive to Christ. This is one area where we need to rediscover some things that we used to do as a culture and by used to I mean a really long time ago. I'm going to suggest that there are at least seven ways that the church can be unhelpful to a couple as they go about trying to pursue marriage.

I'm going to identify seven roadblocks, pitfalls, things that a church should think about as they think about how is it that we can love a brother and a sister who are in the process of trying to get themselves married or not. The first one of ways that a church can be unhelpful is she can treat a courtship as something that it is not. That is, as if it were already a marriage contract. This is not really a talk about the actual courtship process. We can't avoid at least a minimal definition of the key term.

A courtship is not a commitment. It is a process, whatever shape that process takes, that begins when a man first approaches the father or guardian of a woman, expressing his interest, and it ends when a commitment has been made. But the courtship itself is not a commitment. It's an exploration of things that need to be determined to get to the point of a commitment. As perfect as the young people might seem for each other, as much as we might have seen that one coming, nothing's been finalized until he asks and she says yes.

As a church, we should be careful how we express our emotions about somebody else's courtship. Everybody gets emotional about courtships, even if you're just watching from the outside. Even if you are really, really excited about the courtship that your friend is in, it's probably not appropriate to offer congratulations when a courtship starts. Think about it this way. And I got myself in trouble at Hope because of the example I used.

I said that a courtship is, when a courtship starts, It's like a young man is applying for a job. And I got myself in trouble at Hope because I said, it's like he's just submitted his application at the Chick-fil-A. And I realized that probably did it off the cuff and realized it wasn't the best. So it's like he's submitted his application for a job at Target. You don't congratulate somebody when they've applied for the job.

You don't congratulate a company when somebody's applied for a job. You congratulate them when the deal's been closed, when the handshake's been made, and the job's been taken. But nothing's happened at the beginning. Maybe you can be happy for the fellow. Maybe you can smack him on the shoulder and say, oh, I can't believe she'd give you the time of day.

But we need to be really careful. Congratulations are the sort of thing that you offer when something happens. When somebody gets up at prayer night and announces that they're expecting a baby, you offer congratulations then because something has really happened. Even though none of us see it yet, there is a new person in the world. And you congratulate them for that.

You congratulate people when they get engaged or betrothed. On the other hand, maybe you're not at all excited about the courtship. And you should keep those emotions in check as well. Remember that the courtship is not a done deal. Also, we must recognize that as much as we like to see all courtships end in marriage, sometimes they do not.

And sometimes they don't end in marriage for good and sound biblical reasons. We probably need to banish the term failed courtship from our vocabulary. Now I'm going to suggest that there are two classes of ways in which a courtship can fail. The first type of way that a courtship can fail is either when two people who should get married don't, or when two people get married who shouldn't have gotten married. In either one of those cases, for those of us who don't have parental or pastoral oversight, those of us sitting in the cheap seats, we really have very few ways of evaluating that.

A courtship might accomplish exactly what it was supposed to if two people go their separate ways having determined that their parting actually betters the chance for successful building of the kingdom. So that's one way that a courtship can fail. And it's really hard for us to tell. On the other hand, courtships can fail if they lead to sin and hatred between the young man and the young woman. We should be extremely careful and circumspect when considering how we as a church might be culpable for leading an accordion couple to either of these actions.

Are we putting pressure on them? Are we saying how cute they are together? What a great pair they make? How we saw that one coming? Such that they can feel compelled to please and justify our expectations Instead of looking at the Word of God to determine whether or not they're well suited for each other?

Are they trying to please us or are they trying to please God? Does the pressure that we put on a couple cause them to continue a courtship when prudence says that it should end? Or do we inflame their passions to the point of licentiousness? While every person will have to stand before God someday and give an answer for his own sins, we should not deny the fact that the Bible frequently speaks of the sin of causing others to sin. And the very sensitive period of a courtship is a hotbed of opportunity to lead somebody else into sin.

So that's the first way that a church should look out for being unhelpful. Is treating a courtship something that it's not? Secondly, she can assume, because we're trying to find things out for the first time and we're trying to reinvent something, she can assume that all courtships are going to follow a straightforward and simple blueprint, that all courtships are going to look the same. We would really like it if the Bible was more like a handbook at times. Wouldn't it be nice if the Bible went into as much minutia about how to get married as it does about how to offer the whole burnt offering or purify a cleansed leper.

You have details there right down to how you need to wash, and you don't get that for how to get married. It's not there. However, there are a number of factors that should cause us to expect courtships, even within Sovereign Redeemer Church, to look wildly different. First, because we don't have a this is how you get married book in the Bible, it's not tucked in between the testaments, it's not right before maps. What we have are a few principles.

First of all, Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19 as examples shows us that Jesus got his bride through sacrificial acts. And so I'm going to say that it's the plain and inescapable lesson of Scripture that any young man who wants to get married must conduct himself sacrificially in the process of pursuing his bride. In fact, the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are probably the closest thing that we have for a How to Get Married Handbook. Because what you have is Jesus leaving his father's house, coming to earth, to woo a bride. He paid a price for her, and then he left to return to heaven and prepare a place for her and wait the day of consummation.

So if you want, The gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the ways that Jesus got his bride. And any young man who is interested in pursuing a young lady should probably look at the sorts of things that Jesus had to go through to get a bride, and at the same time thank God that it's not as hard as that for him. So secondly, you can also say from Deuteronomy 22, 13-20 as an example, among others, that the father of the young woman is responsible for protecting her purity up until the day that she's married. Thus a father who does not oversee his daughter's romantic attachments takes risks that Scripture warns severely against. And third, we have numerous examples of parents involved in their son's courtships.

The example of Abraham overseeing his sons marriage by sending the servant who was sighted earlier. And that's it. As far as I can tell from scripture, These few principles are the only direct and inescapable guidelines that scripture offers for the process of getting married. There are many other principles for determining whether or not you are qualified to get married, who to get married to, what makes a good match, but for the actual mechanics of how to do this. I see these three and that's about it.

But even within these principles, recognize a wide variety of application. What it means for one to act sacrificially toward a particular woman will probably look entirely different for another man who's acting sacrificially towards another woman. Or a father might say, hey, this is how to court this daughter of mine, but this daughter over here, she needs something different and her courtship is going to look different as a consequence. The sorts of things that affect the way that a courtship goes are going to be things like the level of trust between the father and the daughter, maturity of the young woman, the character of the young man, how many siblings can be bribed into chaperoning, whether or not the moon is full and the tide is up. And Secondly, but related, not only are the principles few in their application diverse, but they are being applied to actual people and by actual people.

We should hope that every courtship is overseen by families of the man and the woman, and that the man would conduct himself like Christ as he pursues sacrificially, but the maturity and background and familiarity and age and sins of the couple will cause a wide number of differences from one courtship to the next. One family may have a model of courtship in mind that's different than yours. That's pretty much what I'm coming down to. And they are justified in doing that, potentially. We should expect that a courtship between two 30-year-olds, for example, is going to look very different than a courtship between two 18-year-olds, and that a courtship between a 30-year-old and an 18-year-old is going to look different from either of those.

Exactly the best way to fashion these courtships is the responsibility of the parents, and our responsibility as a church is not to see if the courtship exactly aligns with our own personal opinions about how a courtship should proceed. At the same time, we are trying to take thoughts captive. It would be nice if there were some level of expectations within this body. So it might not be a bad thing for you as a church to have some sort of discussion about this at some point. What do you expect from a courtship?

How do you expect courtships to proceed? Number three, the church can gossip about the couple or the families involved. The church can gossip about the couple or the family. Alright, look, so if I was giving a talk to people who were in the process of courtship or considering courtship, I would say something along the lines of, look, when you get involved in a courtship, people are going to talk. There's going to be whispers, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, assumptions.

People like to chatter, and there's nothing more fun to chatter about than a cute young couple. Grow some thick skin, Don't let that get to you. You have enough to worry about as you determine whether or not marriage is in your immediate future. But I'm not giving that talk. I'm not talking to that couple.

I'm talking to the rest of us. Those of us who could be the ones chattering. If courtships and potential romances are not the most gossip worthy subject in a church like yours, I'm going to bet they rank in the top five. I know what it's like at Hope, And I know what sovereign is like compared to hope, so I'm just going to make that guess. Let's not be the people who talk and whisper and misunderstand.

Let's not be the people who misinterpret what's happening when a young man and a young woman are interested in each other. The Bible has plenty to say about the destructive nature of gossip. I know you have a pastor who's got several gossip sermons, and they're floating around on the internet. If you hadn't heard one in a while, you can listen to one and realize that just because a young man and a young woman are involved, the rules for gossip for the rest of us still apply. If you're genuinely concerned that a couple in a courtship are sinning in their conduct or close to it?

If you think that they're having a David on the balcony when he should be out at war moment, then the Bible tells you how to approach your brother. Maybe Matthew 18 applies, But the fact that John likes Susie doesn't mean that the rules for gossip have changed. What can we do instead of gossip? There's a couple things. Number one, and this is anytime I've talked with anybody who's been through a courtship.

They all say, hey, we need prayers. So instead of gossiping, you can pray for the couple. The risks of outside pressure from gossip can be so great that some people entertain the idea of keeping their courtship private. Because the risks of being gossiped about, the risks of the pressure that that puts on the couple are enough that the parents think, hey, maybe we need to keep our courtship quiet. There's a lot at stake for the brother and the sister, a lot about which they have little foresight, many apprehensions, everything has serious consequences.

It would be much better as a church If we were the kind of safe place where people could publicize the fact that they're in a courtship, knowing that instead of gossiping about it, we would pray. It's probably a good idea for courtships to be known publicly, because they do involve the young people spending a lot of time together. And if they start spending time together without everybody knowing that a courtship is afoot, then they could, with some justification, be suspected of flirting with sin. So what sort of place do you want sovereign to be? A church where people entertain this idea of keeping their courtship secret because of gossiping, or somewhere where courtships are happily and openly conducted because of how much your prayers are coveted.

How much are we really willing to love our brothers and sisters over our own personal needs to hear tasty trifles? What else could we do instead of gossip? Well, this one came up during the Q&A time at Hope. A father who'd recently been through a courtship said something to the effect of this. He really liked talking about the courtship that his children were going through.

He liked talking about it. And what he wanted, what he would have appreciated, would have been more people coming and talking to him. More people who were concerned or he simply wanted to know. He would have liked the fact that people talked to him and talked to his child and the person involved with his child. So, and I know this from my own courtship, I liked talking about it too.

It was the most exciting time of my life up to that point. So if you're really interested in talking about a courtship, go talk to the people involved. Because, hey, typically they'll like it. And if they don't want to talk to you, they'll let you know. What he didn't appreciate were assumptions and gossip.

He would have much preferred people come directly to him. If we want to take really seriously, and this is important, if we want to take seriously the marriage metaphors in the Bible, Then talking about a courtship among the rest of us actually could offer ample opportunity to talk about the Gospel. You want to learn about Christ and the Church? You want to learn about the way Christ treats the Church? The way John courts Susie could give you real material to work with.

It's supposed to be a picture of the Gospel. And when you see somebody courting somebody else, you should be able to see something of Christ and something of the church there. And that's what we're talking about. So in conclusion, hey, I'm actually going to say, talk about courtships. But when you do it, talk to the parties who are involved.

And when you're talking amongst the rest of yourselves about somebody else's courtship. Make every effort, and this is hard, this is the fine line, this is where you really have to watch your heart. Make every effort that your talk is intended completely and wholly to build them up, to build up the body of Christ, that your best interests for them are in mind and not your best interests for yourself. Number four. Number four.

Roadblocks for courtships in a church. A church can treat the sexes as volatile ingredients that must never be mixed. Look, this is a tough one. The elders at Hope have spoken to us on this several times. We can be so careful to guard the emotional and physical purity of our children that they have no ability to relate as brothers and sisters.

This makes the courtship process significantly more difficult because without natural, no pressure, Getting to know you interactions, the Mr. Jones, I would like to talk to you about your daughter conversation, becomes infinitely more difficult than it should be. Sometimes it never even happens because a poor fellow doesn't know enough about Ms. Jones to talk to Mr. Jones about her.

We're setting up some standards here. We're setting up really high standards for what it takes to even get involved in a romantic relationship in the first place. The standards we're setting up are much higher than she's cute. And finding out whether or not a young man and a young woman would be suitable for each other before you get started in this process of actually going through the courtship and intentionally looking at the two as a couple. There are lots of things that need to be discovered.

Are we fostering an environment where our young people can make those kinds of evaluations? We've set really high standards. Do we make those standards attainable? My oldest children are five and six. So you're going to need to consult with the families that have older children about what's going on here and how to fix this.

I do know that 1 Timothy 5.2 indicates that the relationship between young women and young men in the church is supposed to be carried out as if they are brothers and sisters. If we had more of that, then that would probably give us less cause to start gossiping merely because we saw a boy talking to a girl. Now, this concern is the one that I probably have the least to talk about, But among the sorts of things that were talked about after my talk at Hope, this was number one. It's one of the most obvious issues at Hope. We're trying to figure this out.

How do you make it natural for young men and young women to relate as brothers and sisters while maintaining the emotional and physical purity that they should have? I don't know how things are going over at Sovereign, But I do know that this is something that should be considered as we try and create a completely new culture. Number five, pitfalls for the church that the church can put in front of a couple in a courtship, the church can be filled with jealous people. Maybe a courtship starts and you had your eye on a member of that pair. Maybe you had an eye on one participant for your own child.

Maybe you're simply upset because the happy-looking courtship is happening and you're not part of it. My children get jealous over Lego blocks. It's a horribly silly thing, and jealousy doesn't become any more attractive just because of age and romance. Instead, how much are we going to trust the sovereignty of God? Do we really believe that he's so unconcerned with us that he would leave matters of marriage, matters of our own marriages, to mere human games?

Do we think that he really works all things together for good? That if I'm not in a courtship right now, despite all my desires, that not being in a courtship is part of his good plan for me. I approached Mrs. Seid's father, I approached Mr. Flathers, and when I did he said, thank you very much, I appreciate that, she's not ready right now.

And she wasn't ready for 18 months and I wasn't allowed to tell her anything or talk to her and I had to sit and and hope that there wasn't some other guy out there who didn't know the rules who was going to ask her out for coffee And I had to do a lot of growing up in those 18 months, and that was the best thing for me. And my wife appreciated it later on. So let's be careful. Let's trust this howl of God. Let's not be jealous.

We should rejoice when our brothers are rejoicing. Number six. The church can be overeager to pressure the courtship faster than it should go. Hey, now that I'm on the other side of things, now that I'm already married and not in a courtship anymore and the pressure's off. I can say this, I can say we want more marriages in the church.

Newlyweds are lots of fun to have around. When Megan and I first started coming to Hope, we were the youngest couple. I think the family with the fewest children was the Ruiz's. We were the only newlyweds, so it's lots of fun when there's more newlyweds around. From a purely mathematical stance, more family units means a greater potential to work for the kingdom of God.

You have more people to deploy and with more marriages, you increase the chance of getting more people even. That said, we should be careful as observers not to force a courtship to go faster than it ought to. Some courtships will move quickly, very quickly, especially in the case where there's little to be discovered about the character and suitability of the individuals. In other cases, Many, many things have to be discovered. Some of those things will require time.

Or, probably, both of the individuals may be perfectly suited for each other, but need to mature. And you have to let the courtship progress as they mature, and some of the maturity that's required, and maybe it's of the couple, and maybe it's of the couple's parents, are going to take some time. Let's not pressure a courtship faster than it ought to. God's given parents to particular children in order to oversee that. Related somewhat, number seven, the church can meddlesomely play matchmaker.

The church can meddlesomely play matchmaker. As much as we want to see more marriages, a lot of us are probably not in the best position to set people up. We might think that Jack and Jill make the perfect pair. If only Jack would grow some eyes. If only Jack would ask me if I thought there was anybody perfect for him, I could give him an answer.

Boy howdy. Most of us don't know each other well enough, either to have the insight or the authority to make such suggestions to our friends. We really don't know each other that well. As much as we would like to match people up and set them up, the kinds of pressure that we can put on people are burdensome and meddlesome. I know somebody who went through a courtship that didn't end in marriage.

The week after the courtship concluded, people were already giving him suggestions for other people to court. And if you're trying to figure out who that was right now, you didn't hear everything I said earlier. Again, we need to trust the sovereignty of God that the right people will get matched up. This is not to say that you should never offer advice, that you should never offer discipleship, But that's going to be proportionate to the relationship that you have with somebody probably before they're even into this romantic stage. Let's not be metals and busy bodies.

Let's each mind our own business. So there are seven ways that a church can put roadblocks up in front of people who are trying to get married. Seven ways that a church can make things harder on a couple who are going through a courtship or considering going through a courtship. My conclusion is this. It's a reminder of things that you already know.

Remember that marriage is largely the working out of theological doctrines. Marriage is largely the working out of theological doctrines. We're going to go back to Ephesians 5. I know you've heard it because I know who your pastor is. 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, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkled or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church.

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ in the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Okay, so I say that marriage is largely the working out of theological doctrines.

Look at the theological doctrines that Paul gets in order to tell us about marriage in Ephesians 5. The way I imagine this happening is Paul is looking at his giant bookshelf, just like the ones that you have, his giant bookshelf of theology, and he goes along and he just starts grabbing books in order to put this little paragraph together. Here's the books that he grabs. He talks about Christology. He says Christ is the head of the church.

He talks about the doctrine of soteriology. Christ is a savior. He talks about an ecclesiology. The church is under subjection to Christ. He talks about substitutionary atonement.

Christ gave himself for the church. Verse 26, You see sanctification. Christ sanctifies the church by the word. In verse 27, you see glorification. Christ works glorification in the church, and at the same time, that's an eschatology.

The church will be glorious. You see the second greatest commandment, that husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. You see the doctrine of the incarnation. Christ had flesh and bones. You see the doctrine of perichoresis, big fat word for indwelling, were somehow members of Christ's body.

So what Paul's doing when he talks about marriage is he says, I'm going to take all these really big doctrines that you've read about elsewhere in my letters, that you know about. I'm going to grab these big doctrines, and I'm going to take them, I'm going to take them, and I'm going to dump them on your kitchen table. And I'm going to tell you that the doctrine of the incarnation somehow matters what happens at your kitchen table. I'm going to tell you that the doctrine of ecclesiology matters about what happens in your living room. I'm going to tell you that the second greatest commandment informs what happens in your marriage bed.

Paul grabs all these really big fat doctrines and says this is what your marriage is. Your marriage is working out these things. So think about what that means for young couples in a courtship. There's lessons for us to learn who are already married, but think about what that means for somebody who's not married and considering it. A young couple in a courtship is really in the process, get ready, they're really in the process of determining how compatible their individual theologies are.

That might sound like the most unromantic, definite courtship ever. If it does, then we need to have either a livelier, beefier, more robust, more embodied idea of what theology is, or a less rose petals and candles version of romance. And I'm not saying anything against rose petals and candles. The process of a courtship is a young man and a young woman, whether or not they ever actually say this. The process of courtship is a young man and a young woman saying, hey, Can we apply theology together?

Let us decide now that Sovereign can be the sort of church made up of the sort of people who love the Word of God enough that we rejoice to see the young people take the doctrines that we've been teaching them every week on Sunday and hopefully every day at home and apply them in completely new and totally different ways when they go out and try and get themselves married. I hope that this talk is just the opening up of a discussion among you. It feels to me like I'm having half a conversation here where I'm saying hey here are a few things that I see that could get in the way. Maybe you see others. Maybe there are other applications that need to be made.

But may we grow to better show our love for each other. May we grow to love brothers and sisters who are trying to get married, who are considering getting married, and in doing so, reap the benefits of learning in real life what it means to be the friend of the bride and the bridegroom. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have revealed yourself in Scripture, that you have not hidden yourself from us. We thank you for the things that you show us, the things that you require of us, the things that you ask of us.

And we do pray that as we look at and consider the brothers and sisters in our midst who would like to be married, who are considering marriage, who will be considering marriage in the future, that you would cause us to grow in our love towards them, that you would cause our hearts and our minds to be soft and tender toward them and the needs and the time that they're going through. We thank you for the way Jesus sacrificed for his church. In Jesus' name, Amen.