The Worst Marriages
Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · January 25, 2026 · love, sex, relationships series
Marc Jolicoeur looks at Matthew 19, Genesis 2 and 3, 1 Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 5 to show what makes marriages struggle: selfishness, keeping score, neediness, and misrepresenting Christ's love. Marriage and singleness both point to Christ.
More from Marc Jolicoeur · The love, sex, relationships series
Topics: Love, Relationships, Marriage & Family
Transcript
[0:00] If I had time, I'd Shazam that song. I think we've had a lot of opening, you know, songs, whatever, as part of these videos. But that's the best one. That is a good, that's a, if you see me driving around town and my windows are rolled down, I might be listening to that song. It's pretty good. Hi, my name is Marc and I'm here to be your speaker for this morning. So, I think we're in week four of a five week series about love, sex, and relationships. And I have to, I get to, I was gifted this title for a message. I didn't choose it, but I'm gonna lean into it. And this is the title, The Worst Marriages, the Worst Marriages, just the Absolute Worst. So immediately, I have lost a significant portion of this room.
[0:46] I don't know which portion it is, but it's a portion, you're either not married and not interested in marriage. You are married and not interested in marriage, or you have some kind of, you know, trigger warning where this, like, the word marriage is like, you know, fight or flight. And I'm gonna shut down. Now, hey, we may or may not know each other. But I'm gonna ask that you consider just for the next, you know, few minutes, just go with me. Try it out, see if maybe there's something for you in this message. And if there isn't afterwards on the way out, let me know. Say, "Hey, nothing there." I would like to hear that, that would be helpful feedback for me to receive from you. I am not speaking to you as an expert in marriage.
[1:32] I have been married for 18 years, which is a staggering number to me. The only pro tip that I have, the only one is choose a day to get married on that is difficult to forget. So we got married on February 29th, and so it really means that all I have to do is make sure that every four years I remember this. And it's, you know, the odds are good that, that increases the odds of likely. So just like, that's all I've got. I'm not a pro in this. And also, you know, I'm not a pro. Thanks be to God, in, you know, being a member of the worst of marriages. So me standing here, like, why is this guy talking about marriage? I mean, if you're nervous about it, I guarantee you that nobody is more nervous about it than my wife who was only in the first service and is now not here.
[2:18] So she's, phew, one less, well, you know, one less thing to worry about. But I guarantee you that when you think about marriage, you're not like, I wonder what Marc and Esther's marriage is like, that's not at the top of your list. It's probably, possibly not even at the top of your list to think about like what the Bible says about marriage. It's possibly not. When you think about marriage, it's possibly, you think about somebody in your own life that you have close connection with, maybe a parent or parents, a sibling, or somebody that you grew up with. Or if you're anything like me, you think about TV. And so, like, behind me are a bunch of people who have been married. Is it gonna help you look at all these people, look at all these wonderful couples on television, right? These are the people that I tend to think about when I think of marriage, for good or for ill, I think of just the media culture that I've been saturated in.
[3:04] And so, you know, God bless Marge and Homer, but I think actually, Mommy and Daddy Pig might be my favorites at the moment. I'm really rooting for them. I hope everything works out for those people. I don't know exactly what you think about when you think about marriage, but we are gonna actually not take a look at any sitcoms or cartoons. We're actually gonna take a look primarily at the Bible. And before we do that, I just wanna mention something about the title itself. The Worst Marriages, you might say, Marc, that's kind of negative. Why lean so negative? Marc, are you just trying to polarize us? And is this clickbait? No, nay, nay. This is not clickbait. That's not what this is. I wanna give you, sometimes when I speak, I like to give people a $2 word. You know, something they can kind of drop at lunch just to impress their friends.
[3:51] And here's that $2 word for you today. The word is apophaticism. Would you care to try it? Apophaticism, apophaticism, that's good. Has nothing to do with diets. It's not like that, that it's a pH in there, apophaticism. And so what it actually is in reference normally is in reference to theology. And it's kind of sometimes described as negative theology. But again, not like bad theology. It means, like negative, like a picture. If anybody's old enough to remember a film, pictures like a negative of that. So the idea being that sometimes when it comes to God, it's easier to describe what God isn't, than exactly what God is. Sometimes it's safer to say, well, I know for sure He's not this as it is to try to define strictly what God is.
[4:40] 'Cause God is ineffable, He's unable to be kind of fully understood. And so there's a tradition that's developed called apophatic theology. And so we're gonna kind of drop that a little bit here today. We talked about marriage, 'cause actually marriage as we'll find out, is a bit of a mystery. And so rather than try to say this is exactly what marriage is, we're just gonna give you some pictures of what marriage is sometimes and let you know that's bad. And hopefully in understanding that it will help us to see what the positive version is on the other side. Okay? Does that make sense? Alright. So as I mentioned, we're not gonna analyze any particular episodes of Bob's Burgers or whatever was up on the screen. In fact, what we're gonna do is we're gonna read the Scriptures. And so we're gonna read a number of Scriptures today. They're all going to be from the New Living Translation, which is an English translation of the Bible.
[5:27] That's important because I'll mention that as we go along here, but I just wanted to give you a bit of a heads up on that. We often, we don't always, but we often use that translation of the Bible. It's pretty readable because we are in a church. Maybe you're a Christian, maybe you're not. But because we're in a church, we're gonna start with the words of Christ. So we're actually gonna go to the New Testament, and we're gonna drop in at Matthew chapter 19. Matthew chapter 19. If you wanna go there, it'll be up on the screen, of course, but if you'd like to flick, flick along, you can do that. Matthew 19, Jesus Himself, He's just left Galilee. He's gone across the river to a place, sometimes known as the Transjordan. So He is actually a little further away from Jerusalem than He will be in the coming weeks. But the Pharisees, if you know anything about them, they're like so obsessed with Him.
[6:15] They are really, really obsessed. And so they have followed Him to this location, and they are trying to disprove Jesus. And they're like, "I got a great idea. Let's ask Him a trick question." Love trick questions. So this is the trick question in Matthew chapter 19 that kind of opens us and opens a window on the way that Jesus thinks about and speaks about marriage. Matthew 19:3, "Then some of the Pharisees came and tried to trap Him with this question: 'Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason?' Jesus replied to them, 'Haven't you read the Scriptures? They record that from the beginning, God made them male and female.' And He said, 'This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife.
[7:09] And the two are united into one. And since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.'" And they say, "Well then, why did Moses say in the law that a man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and then send her away?" Now, this is a good question because Jesus opens His retort by saying, "Haven't you guys, like, read this thing?" And they say, "Well, we have, in fact," and in Deuteronomy, which is, you know, the fifth book, later on. So you got Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So it's in there. It's early, it's in the package. They say, there is a passage in Deuteronomy 24:1 that Moses is purported to have written that He actually allows for divorce.
[7:59] So they say, "Yeah, we've picked up the book. Why then does Moses say it's okay?" And here's where we see a window into how Jesus thinks about this. And He says, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts. But check this out. It was not what God had originally intended," or another translation, what I'm used to kind of hearing, "but it was not so in the beginning." It was not so in the beginning. So we started in the middle of the Bible, actually, kind of two thirds of the way through, with very important words of Jesus. That's always a good place to start for Christians. And Christ Jesus Himself says, actually, "Let me take you back to the beginning. Let's go back to the OG, the original, Genesis."
[8:46] So He takes you to the first couple chapters of the Bible, which is where we're going to go now, because He actually quotes from Genesis chapter 2. Now, some of us have, we read through Genesis chapters 2 and 3 a little bit last week when Jim and Sam were sharing. And so if you haven't listened to that message, definitely recommend that you do that. We're gonna retread a little bit of the same ground, but I also promise you it's gonna look a little bit different as we go. So, same translation of the Bible all the way back at the beginning. Genesis chapter 2, we're starting at verse 18, and it says this, "Then the Lord God said," oh, wait, so what's the "then"? So, God, in Genesis chapter 1, we read one telling of how everything came to be: birds of the sky, the land, man, animals, the little fishes, and then also humanity.
[9:36] We read all that in Genesis chapter 1. And Genesis chapter 2 is a different window on that same creation story told, kind of from a different vantage point. And we get a different story here as to how it's told. So man, or we're using the word man, we mean humanity. Like, a person was first created by God. So you got all the trees, you've got the sky, but there's no other living creatures crawling around right now, what we have is a person, okay? So this is where we pick up. "Then the Lord God said, 'Wait a minute. It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.' Now, I want you to take that word helper and just kind of grab it and tuck it in the back of your brain.
[10:22] Okay, helper, we're gonna come back to that. So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And the man chose a name for each one," which is a great Bob Dylan song if you don't know it. "So he gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky and all the wild animals. But still, there was no helper that was just right for him. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. And while the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man's ribs." Now we have helper back in the side of the brain. I want us to take the word rib. We're just gonna put rib right back here. Okay?
[11:08] So remember that word rib, "and He closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and He brought her to the man. 'At last,' the man exclaimed. 'This one is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh. She will be called woman because she was taken from man.'" And here's the verse that Jesus quoted, and we'll see it again later on this morning as well. So hopefully you remember it by now. "This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." Now, I made a big deal near the beginning about the fact that we were reading the New Living Translation, right?
[11:55] And here's the thing. So this morning, I'm not gonna be moving from translation to translation. Have you guys ever tried to look at how many English translations of the Bible? There are, there's so many. It's wild. And that's actually a beautiful thing. We are spoiled for choice, as you sometimes say when it comes to the Bible. What it can sometimes do though, is it sometimes adds clarity and sometimes it adds confusion. 'Cause you are kinda asking yourself, well, what's the real word here? And I often like people to say to people when they ask, "Hey, what's the best translation of the Bible?" I will often say, "The one that you're likeliest to read." That's usually the way that I lean. Now, there are some translations that are better than others, and I'm happy to have that conversation if you'd like. But the NLT, the New Living Translation, perfectly, perfectly good.
[12:40] Very good. Very readable, very understandable. That's nice. So there are two different words that I asked you to tuck into the back of your mind here, because I want to be able to kind of unpack them as we go. And it's not because there's anything wrong with the way that the New Living Translation has translated them, it's just that there's at least two different reasons why this stuff can be difficult for us to understand sometimes. And sometimes it is about translation. People translate, you know, these translations are just that, translations from original texts, though we hope that God is guiding them, it, you know, there's still people involved, right? So sometimes you have to, there's questions about whether or not that is the best word to use. And so that's a bit of an issue. But sometimes it's not about translations, it's just about context. And so when you read something, you are reading it without understanding what's going on around it.
[13:30] So here's the two things we're gonna talk about. We're gonna start with the second one first. How's that for fun? So I wanna grab that word rib. We read it earlier. Rib. So God created Eve, as she comes to be known, and as a woman, out of the rib of the man, or Adam, as he comes to be known later on. So, I remember this, growing up, I just kind of this idea that it was like, I don't know, he anesthetized him and then gave him like a slight kind of incision. It was like, I just kind of grabbed that bone outta there and, you know, and Adam woke up and he was like, oh, it's weird. You know, but he is like, but everything's fine. That wasn't like, he wasn't dramatically changed or whatever, but he was like, oh look, woman. That's great. So the word rib, it's good. It's a good translation of the word. It is.
[14:16] It's from a Hebrew word, tsela, which is often translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as rib. And so rib not just like the thing that happens here, but like, it's a curved kind of structural piece. So like boats have ribs. They have this kind of, you know, these little rib things that happen, and they, that you build a boat, kind of on the skeletal structure around that. Rib is a good word. The challenge is there's some recent scholarship that's letting us know that that translation of the word is probably a later use of the word in Hebrew. So in other words, it is a good translation of the word. It's just that it may or may not have been actually what the word meant when the Bible was composed. Because Hebrew as a language evolved just as English as a language evolved.
[15:05] I'm gonna switch it up. I used a different example for this morning. I used the word nice. So nice. Actually, hey, we got 30 more seconds. So the word nice. It's a nice word, right? We like nice. Nice is nice. But now the word nice means something nice. But in the past, the English word, nice, same four letters, basically meant you were stupid or kind of, you know, like, so kind of innocent or gullible or nice. So that's not very nice, right? But that's what the word nice meant at that point in time. So you can see how it's the same word and it's kind of evolved over time. What's a very popular word today? Artificial. Is your intelligence artificial? I hope not. So artificial, right? We don't like artificial. Artificial sweeteners. Maybe you like them. I don't. Artificial is generally negative.
[15:53] Artificial is a synonym for fake. But it used to be that artificial meant, well, something was actually done by an artisan, that was actually crafted. So artificial at that point in time meant quality, right? And now it comes to mean something else. Nobody's pulling a fast one. Nobody's trying to fool you. It's just that languages are living things that move on. So it is with tsela. So it is with rib. Is rib a good translation of the word? Yes. Is there a better translation? Possibly. And it could be, and many people would argue this. In fact, the New English Translation of the Bible will have this word. It will say, "from Adam's side," okay? You're like, Marc, this is much ado about nothing. What's the difference between a rib and a side?
[16:39] Well, here's the difference. I know at least a few people who, they took a tumble and they were kind of sore for a few days. They're like, what's going, ah, man, that's kind of annoying. But they went about their day, eventually found out that they had broken a rib, and that when they went in, they're like, oh yeah, that sucks. You broke a rib. And they would, you know, but you can't even, you're not gonna get a cast or whatever. They're gonna wrap you up. And then within a few weeks, all of a sudden you're hunky-dory and your rib's back, right? That's one thing. If you lost your side, you would head to the emergency room immediately or you would be deceased, right? So one is sort of like, you know, it's important, but it's like your appendix. Apparently you can lose it. You can't lose your side, right?
[17:25] So the structural integrity is required. And so I think rather the original understanding of this is supposed to show us that the person, like the original person, it was not just that this kind of unimportant section was removed, and then this other creature was created, but that really they became, as it were, two people, which explains why it's so important for males and females, for femininity and masculinity to actually work together in this world. And that goes way beyond marriage. It actually refers to just how we relate to one another as human beings. We are not negotiable. We are structurally required for one another, not just physically, but also emotionally, mentally, we need to coexist.
[18:18] So that's the one word, rib. The other one I told you to tuck back here is the word helper. And I have seen all kinds of people say, well, if the woman is the man's helper, I mean, you know, that implies, you know, this person here and this person here, right? That's what a helper is, right? I know what it's like when a little helper comes along. I've got kids, you know, they're there. You can go pick up after me after it goes. But the challenge with that word helper is it's not a translation issue. Helper is a good word. The Hebrew word is ezer, which, if you know Ebenezer, which is the name of Scrooge, that's where, I don't know why I brought that up, but it's the point. It's not important. Ezer, helper. That's a good translation to the word. The challenge is that it's not maybe what you're thinking when you think of a helper.
[19:06] So without even looking for this, just in my own reading last week, I go through a psalm most mornings, and it was Psalm 54 last week. So I'm reading through Psalm 54:4, and it says, "God is my helper." And you're like, I mean, God's not, you know, falling along behind me, kind of picking up the trash, and I can pat Him on the head, right? There's no kind of subservience when it comes to God. He's not beneath me in any way, shape, or form, right? It's actually the opposite way. But if God is my helper, that word helper must not mean exactly what I think it means. So rather, I want us to look at this creation story where man and woman become distinct, but connected as actually not just a servant relationship in any way, but as a partnership, as companionship.
[20:04] And I hope you see that as an important thing to hold in your mind as we move forward. And flip the page from Genesis chapter 2 to Genesis chapter 3. Again, last week we hit on this idea of what is known usually as the fall or when humans decide to kind of pluck the thing that they weren't supposed to pluck, to decide for themselves that they knew best. And now we live in the aftermath of the consequences of what happens when we try to move God out of the equation. And so in this post-fall world, God shows up and He says, here are going to be the consequences of your choices.
[20:51] And these consequences are often known, like I said, as the fall or as the curse. And I'm not going to read all of them. I'm gonna read you one verse. And this is from Genesis chapter 3, verse 16. And it says this, "You'll desire to control your husband." Obviously this is speaking to the woman who's not yet named Eve, "but you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you. You will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you."
[21:38] That doesn't sound like companionship, right? That sounds more like competition, right? And here's the thing. It describes in many ways the world in which we live. And what's weird to me, I've always found it weird, but I also wanna speak about it graciously. People I know, people I've listened to, people I've sat under in terms of teaching, people who are beautiful, God-loving people. They actually use part of this verse as a reason to explain why one gender should be the leader over another gender. And they say, look, it's right here, Genesis 3:16.
[22:26] And it's like, are you missing the fact that this is actually part of the curse? This is after the fall, or to paraphrase Jesus, it was not so in the beginning. What was supposed to be companionship, what was supposed to be a company has devolved in some respects into competition with one another. And this goes way beyond marriage, as I've mentioned before. I mean, this is just kind of writ large across biology and across psychology and how these people work together. There was a report that was released just a few weeks ago, and it said that of the Atlantic provinces, New Brunswick has the highest rate of domestic abuse.
[23:20] So that's not the kind of award you're hoping to win, right? You can just see it everywhere you go. Whether it happens to be on TV, on the news, or just people, you know, there is enmity between us. There is strife, but it is not supposed to be. So among those of us who are called according to Christ Jesus. So here we go: the worst marriages live out of a Genesis 3 curse rather than out of a Genesis 2 blessing. The worst marriages, guys, are living out of cursing and not out of blessing. Now, I'm gonna lighten it a little bit here.
[24:06] I'm gonna give you some more worse. But these ones will hopefully be a little bit less kind of catastrophic, but we will still work back towards it. 'Cause I'm hoping that we can understand that that's important for us to be people who live into the new kingdom, not out of the old paradigm. But here's another worst, okay? I'm gonna you three of them rapid fire, boom, boom, boom. The worst marriages are selfish. If you've ever been to a wedding, like probably almost ever been to a wedding, maybe you've heard 1 Corinthians 13 read at that wedding. I read them at a lot. I read at a lot of weddings. It's a beautiful passage of Scripture to read at weddings. I tell them it's not about marriage, but that's fine. And they're always fine with it too, 'cause the truth is that it has a lot to share with us, right? So if you're familiar with this passage of Scripture, sometimes called the love passage of the love chapter, it starts off like this in a lot of translations, or at least verse 4 starts off like this, "Love is patient," right?
[25:00] "Love is kind, love doesn't envy. It doesn't boast." So it's kind of envy and boast, right? So the idea is love isn't looking at somebody else and saying, I wish I had what they had. And love isn't kind of like elevating itself, making it feel good because they're saying, I have what they don't have. Right? Love is not selfish. And the worst marriages are marriages that are selfish. It's not about getting what you can get out of a marriage. And maybe you've seen a marriage like that. Maybe you know of a marriage like that, that is a person trying to get what they can get, right? That's the worst. Jesus Himself, you know, in Mark and elsewhere says that He came not to be served, but to serve.
[25:45] Right? And if the worst marriages, they're gonna be selfish marriages, the worst marriages keep score, the worst. Marriages keep score. If we're going on in 1 Corinthians 13, it'll say that love is not easily angered or resentful. And I love this. It'll often say, "Love keeps no record of wrongs." Love keeps no record of wrongs. Or in The Message paraphrase to the Bible, it actually says, "Love doesn't keep score." Love doesn't keep score. So I will ask, who here has, you know, basically kind of internally kept score about how many times you did dishes last week as opposed to, you know, whether your partner did dishes last week, or, you know, whether you took the dog out for a walk as opposed to your partner taking the dog out for a walk.
[26:34] Or how about this? Whether you make more money than they do, or whether you spend more money than they do, right? There's so many different ways that we can be, you know, inclined to try to keep score, to try to see if we can get even. But the worst marriages are about keeping score. Now, listen, I'm not saying that we should be taking advantage of in our relationships. That's a whole other ballpark, okay? That's not what we're talking about. But we certainly shouldn't be looking to try to be even, or get even. I wasn't really knowing that Jeremy was gonna, when he set up communion, I was gonna mention the word covenant as many times as he did.
[27:22] But it really stood out to me when he was talking about covenant, covenant, covenant. A marriage is not a contract. It's a covenant. And so actually, one of the people who's a teacher at this, he teaches with us on Tidal classes on Monday, and he's also a teacher in the public school. Brad Carpenter, shout out to Brad. He shared this with me a few weeks ago, and I thought, man, that's helpful. I had heard it before, but just the way he framed it was so good. And he was like, Marc, marriage is not a contract, right? It's a covenant. Well, a contract is if you, you know, pay this many dollars a month for your phone bill, you'll get this much data. And if you don't get this much data, then guess what? You shouldn't have paid that much for your phone bill. Or, hey, you're going to go ahead and say that for the next 12 months, you're gonna live at this place. You're gonna give us this much money per month, and we're gonna make sure that you have electricity and hot water.
[28:09] And if you don't get those things, and you, guess what? You didn't need to pay it, you don't need to live there anymore, right? That's a contract. A contract is an if this, then that. It's an equation, right? But a covenant is not like that. A covenant is not 50% and 50% makes a hundred percent. A covenant is a hundred percent and a hundred percent. And whether or not the hundred percent gets met, the hundred percent gets offered. I have stood in on the platform for a lot of weddings, and the marriage vows that are given are not, if you do this, I will do that. I have never, I would not say yes to those wedding vows, right? The wedding vows are what often you hear, like, you know, for richer or poorer, you know, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
[29:01] Not if just this. The worst marriages keep score. And then the worst marriages are, I like to say, super needy. Not just needy, but like super needy. And we're weaseling our way into a section here where I'm gonna realize that it's gonna sound like I'm contradicting myself, and I hope that I'm able to pull it out by the end of it. But I think that the worst marriages are like really made up of people who are super needy. As you go on in 1 Corinthians 13, there's a section that is usually translated as "love is not self-serving," but it's sometimes translated as "love is not self-seeking."
[29:46] And what they mean by that, I believe, is what Paul is saying, is you're not seeking your own things. So it's very much like, you know, very similar to selfish. But I think there's something about even the way that wording has showed up that is so relevant. Love is not self-seeking. I'm not trying to seek myself in another person, right? You cannot expect a marriage to fulfill you. Now, I have never seen the movie Jerry Maguire, and I'm not recommending that you watch it 'cause I don't really know enough about it. But Jerry Maguire, it was released before a lot of you people were born. I'm sorry, but it's still available on the internet. And there's a famous line from this movie, Jerry Maguire. I know the line even though I've never seen the movie. I know that Tom Cruise looks at Renee Zellweger and he says something along the lines of, "You complete me."
[30:36] This is, I'm gonna look at the close-up, the camera, "You complete me." That's like borderline codependency. That he would be diagnosed with codependency. If you are looking at a marriage partner, at anybody, to quote-unquote complete you, then you have gone too far. You have missed the point of what it is to be in Christ as we go along here. And so, we're gonna circle back to that 'cause you're gonna say, "But Marc, you mentioned the whole idea of like males and females." Yeah, stick with me. So the worst marriages are selfish. The worst marriages keep score. The worst marriages are super needy, but much more important, the worst marriages, the worst marriages misrepresent marriage.
[31:22] Now, what I'm gonna do here, so we started with Jesus and then we went all the way back to the beginning. We read Genesis. I'm gonna move a little bit further in the story here. And we're gonna take a look at a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. This is one of the, just an absolutely beautiful letter. This is the passage of Scripture that I usually read at weddings if I'm not required to read 1 Corinthians 13. So this is Ephesians chapter 5, and we're gonna start at verse 21. And I'm gonna read a big chunk of this. And the reason I'm gonna read a big chunk of this is because I don't want you to think that we are cherry-picking or like trying to like maneuver this around, because as we read through this, there's gonna be some things you're gonna go, "Wow, that sounds, I'm not sure how to deal with that. That's kind of culturally, that's hitting me in strange ways." But listen, the Bible is what the Bible is, and we have to hold it all together.
[32:12] But I want you to hear everything that we're gonna read in light of the very opening sentence that we're reading from Ephesians chapter 5, verse 21. And that sentence is this: Submit to one another, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For husband is the head of his wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of His body, the church, as the church submits to Christ. So you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up His life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's Word.
[33:03] He did this to present her to Himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she'll be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body, but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. We are members of His body. And here you go, you're gonna find this familiar, as the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." But here's the part, guys, check this out.
[33:49] This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way that Christ and the church are one. The worst marriages misrepresent, they misrepresent marriage. Now, here, behold, after all this time, especially if you've been here and you're like, I'm not even really, I don't know if I'm into this whole Jesus thing, I don't necessarily consider myself a Christian, but I sure have noticed that Christians are awfully obsessed with marriage.
[34:35] They talk about it a lot. They're always trying to make sure that, you know, the definition of it isn't, you know, rejiggered or reworked, on whether that happens to be in the kind of cultural sphere or legislatively. Why are they so concerned about this word, marriage? Because of this. Because we know, we have been shown that actually marriage is a mystery that points to the relationship between heaven and earth, between forever and today, and between Christ and the church. So it's worth working for. Now, before I let you go, I would like to return to where we started, Matthew chapter 19, because I kind of finished the section off before we got to kind of a surprising point.
[35:34] We pick up in verse 10 of chapter 19. You'll remember Jesus was talking with the Pharisees, and He basically said, you, even though, yeah, I understand that there's certain parts of the Bible that suggests that you can have divorce for whatever reason or for certain reasons that wasn't the original intention. That's a Genesis 3 reality. But I'm calling you towards a Genesis 2 reality. Now, His disciples, the people who are not trying to test Him at all, but who are like, I'm in with this guy, like, I'm on board, His disciples, they say, if this is the case, it is better not to marry. I'm always surprised by that. And like, they're like, if I can't, if there's no escape clause, I don't really wanna hop in on this. But they, there's like, it's better not to marry.
[36:20] Maybe it's 'cause it was such a radical paradigm shift for them. They were used to thinking that they could easily, but it was this rattling, this was rattling for them. Jesus says, "Not everyone can accept this statement. Only those whom God helps. Some are born as eunuch. Some have been made eunuch by others. And some choose not to marry for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." Or as it says in a lot of translations, some choose to live as eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can. Now I know what you're thinking, Marc, is this the twist where at the end of a whole sermon about marriage, you basically tell us that we don't need to get married to be fulfilled?
[37:12] It's, whoa, surprise ending, right? It's a Sixth Sense style. That's another outdated reference. Sorry. The one thing I want you to know is if you don't know what a eunuch is, I mean, you can Google it if you want to. I don't know how concerned you are about your search history and what shows up on that, but I'll try to give you the summation, which is essentially, it's primarily considered a male who was born as a male but doesn't have the biological organs required for procreation. So let me say this, there are some who are born in such a way that they will never marry and have sex. There are some for whom something has happened to them where there's no choice of their own, but that is now the life for them. But what Jesus ends up saying is, there are some who will actually choose this life of celibacy and they will choose it for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
[38:12] I find it really difficult. I don't know about you, but I have found it really difficult to be able to speak well about something, to be able to hold it up and say, this is valuable, this is beautiful, and this is true. And then also at the same time, try to hold up something else that feels like it's kind of in competition with the other thing and say, this is valuable, this is beautiful and this is true, but this is what I've been gifted with this morning, is this opportunity to say like, Jesus, marriage is beautiful and singleness is beautiful. I'm actually gonna let you know in case you didn't know that, marriage is not required for self-actualization and to be a loved person.
[39:03] Actually, I'm gonna go one step further and maybe the most controversial thing I've said so far this morning is that you actually don't need to have sex to be a fulfilled person. It's crazy, I know, but you know why I can say it? Because of Jesus. Jesus Himself, the one that we opened this conversation with, who told us how beautiful and meaningful and important marriage is, He Himself lived as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And so if the most fulfilled person in all of human history could live that way, maybe you could live a fulfilled life that way too. So this isn't a pitch for singleness, but I also need you to know it's not a pitch for marriage.
[39:50] Both of these things are beautiful ways and opportunities to live for Christ in the here and in the now. Marriage is not finding your missing piece. It's one particular way of showing the world that Christ is the missing piece. So whether we do that as singles, or whether we do that in marriage, if we're followers of Christ, the whole goal is to be able to represent those things well. Marriage is a mystery that points to the relationship between heaven and earth, between forever and today, between Christ and His church.
[40:35] And so what does that mean for you? Well, in a moment, I'm gonna pray for you. I'm gonna pray for those of you who are single, that you're able to live in the world as people who represent Christ well. And I'm gonna pray for those of you who are married, that you're able to live in the world as people who represent Christ well in either of the situations that you find yourself. But before I do that, I wanna show you on the screen here an opportunity. Now, speaking specifically now to those of you who are married, you've heard it already, I'm sure a few times that starting not tomorrow, but next Monday, on February 2nd, we have a seven week marriage course. And I'm telling you, I myself and my wife, we took it a few years ago and it was so helpful. And I know so many of you who I've spoken to, you said like it was really helpful for them.
[41:24] If you're able to make that happen, you can still sign up. You can sign up throughout this week. There's a link on the website that just says the marriage course. You can hit that and listen, I don't want anything to stand in your way. But the thing is, I actually know there's a number of you who just can't do that. You work shift work. You can't have the time. You know, the babysitting is an absolute nightmare for you at this point in time. Or, you know, your partner is just not into it. They're not gonna go there. There's all these different reasons why maybe this particular course is not gonna work for you. But I don't want to leave you hanging after sitting here and haranguing you for the last half an hour and letting you know that marriage is such an important and beautiful way. I don't want to leave you without a next step. So if you go to the Tidal Church, maybe you're listening to this later on in the week or you're watching this online, if you go to Tidal Church, you can hit the link there that just says Marriage.
[42:15] Next Step. There's a very simple form. Just ask a few pieces of information. We will follow up with you and we will do our best to try to resource you and support you in this world. We want you to live a Genesis 2 blessing, not a Genesis 3 cursing into the world. Can I invite you guys to stand with me? I'm just gonna pray with you and then I'm gonna invite the prayer team forward here as we get ready to head out. But I'm gonna start just by praying a blessing. Father, Creator of all, Maker of all things.
[43:01] You looked at the one person and said one is not good, and then You took it and You made us so that we actually need to live in partnership together. Male and female both created in the image of God and then You made it so that those certain males and females, when they're joined together, they represent the union between You and Your people. They are an icon, an image of what it looks like to be united between heaven and earth. So we're so passionate about being able to represent You well in this world. So I pray for every married person in this room, for those who are happily married, I pray continued blessings.
[43:51] For those who are in tension and struggle, whether that's spiritual, whether that's financial, for any reason whatsoever, whether there is tension, where there is mismatch, where there's enmity, where there's competition, Lord, I pray for blessing. I pray that You would support them, that You, Lord, would be their helper. And for people who are in the aftermath of a marriage, whether it's one that is currently exploding or one that has long, long been dead, I pray that You would prove Yourself, Lord, to be the One who works all things together for good.
[44:38] That You would bring healing and wholeness, that You would help to not add any more kind of generational frustration on what it is to be married, and that You would heal these people, Lord. And that going forward for this generation, for the generation that is coming up, would we as a church be able to represent You to the world? Well, when it comes to marriage, not in a confrontational way, not in a culture war way, but merely in a way that says we, for our part, we will live in companionship and in God-fearing and God-honoring ways with our spouses. For those who are here, who are single, if that singleness is for a season, and I mean whether that means that they are now children or teenagers or young people who are pursuing marriage, I pray, Lord, that You would help them to be holy in their singleness.
[45:34] That You'd help them to see that regardless of the scripts that are being played out around them, they don't need to follow those messages, but they can actually follow You and allow You to be their wholeness. And for the subset of people among us who are able to hear those hard words of Jesus, the words that God can help them to receive, that they're called to a life where they rely not exclusively on a marriage partner, but exclusively on You. Lord, I pray that You would supernaturally show up and bless them and help them to know Your wholeness and that You'd help them to live holy lives. Lord, all of it. The marriage, the singleness, all of it intended to point towards this relationship between heaven and earth and Your church, Your gathered people.
[46:24] You want us to be a spotless bride. So Lord, help us to live holy lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen. Hey, so we're gonna invite the prayer team forward. If there's any prayer requests that you have, anything you want them to partner with, they would love to be able to join you in that. Again, that form is gonna be available online throughout the week. So if you didn't wanna snap a shot this morning and say, "I need help," you can go ahead and hit that any point in time. Let me just speak a word of blessing over you before you go. Okay? May the Lord bless you and keep you. This is for every person in this room. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you. Yeah. In your marriage, in your singleness, in your brokenness, in your frustration, may the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.
[47:22] In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I bless you this week, guys.