Art in Heaven?
Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · February 26, 2023 · Our Imperfect Family series
Marc Jolicoeur looks at Matthew 22 and Matthew 19, with Ephesians 5 and Revelation 21, to explore singleness and marriage in light of eternity. Both are gifts from God, and marriage is a picture of Christ and His people that will be fulfilled in the age to come.
More from Marc Jolicoeur · The Our Imperfect Family series
Topics: Relationships, Marriage & Family, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] Well, John, notice that there are a bunch of paintings out in the atrium. Anybody see any of these kind of paintings and sculptures and stuff? There's some pretty cool stuff out there. You should, if you haven't seen it, you should check it out, because today is the last day that most of them will be on display out in the atrium. And if you haven't noticed, because there's been a lot going on up here as well, we do have some people who are doing some live painting right now over. Yes, they're there, so they walked in this morning with blank canvases, and they're leaving this afternoon with canvases that were done while we were singing together, while we're praying together, and even while we're learning from the Word together. So I think that's pretty cool. And so why all this is happening? Why? Well, this is Imagine weekends. This is the third year in a row that we've done Imagine, but the first year we've been able to do it with any kind of in-person event.
[0:45] So we had an in-person event last Saturday evening, which was just phenomenal, and so we're really excited about what's going to come in the years ahead as well. So if you're already thinking, well, I'm an artist, Imagine 24 it probably is coming up next year. So stick with us. And if you want to both take a look at, maybe we'll put some pictures of what is going to be the final products from here. But also a lot of things that you didn't get a chance necessarily to see from the atrium and some other things that were submitted. All of that will go online and you can check it out at mw.church slash imagine, which I now realize is out of step on the slides. But if you go to mw.church slash imagine, there you go. Today it'll forward you to our Facebook group, and you can, if you want to, like it or just circle back there some other time and see it. That's where the best place for you to see things. And the theme this year for Imagine, we often give them a bit of a theme. It's like a conversation starter, a way of engaging with the art. The theme this year was Art in Heaven.
[1:43] Art in Heaven, and it kind of came from, well, the Lord's Prayer. So if you know the English version that we typically say around here, it goes something like this. Normally it starts by saying, Our Father who is in heaven, right, or Our Father in heaven. We might say, but if we have any people who know Ye Old King James version, the Shakespearean type Bible, it's often read something like, Our Father which art in heaven, right, which art in heaven. So which kind of started saying that stream of consciousness over and over, which art in heaven, which are in heaven, and then it was like, what art in heaven, and when Art in Heaven, and, you know, why Art in Heaven? And then we just kind of dropped it like, all right, in heaven. Yeah, maybe Art in Heaven. And so that gave us the opportunity to kind of think, you know, would there be art in heaven? And so that's actually going to be one of the questions that I'm going to answer today, but that I'm gonna try to answer today. But we're also at the very tail end of our imperfect family series, and on the heels of yesterday's just phenomenal parenting conference that I was blessed to be able to take part in over at the Life Center here.
[2:52] And so next year, if that does come around, I'm not speaking that into reality, but if it does, I'd encourage you to check it out. But since it's at the end of our family series, we wanted to take a moment today to talk about singleness and marriage, to kind of talk about both of those things and really to kind of how they play into this idea of eternity. So, you know, not much to talk about this morning, only the question of whether or not there's art in heaven and what the role is singleness and marriage. And we'll probably talk about Jesus too. So buckle up. A lot of the things might even seem pretty disconnected. But when I started researching it and started reading and praying about it, I was actually led to what I think is a pretty meaningful connection point, and one that for me, frankly, is incredibly hopeful, and I do hope that you're going to find it hopeful as well. So we're gonna start by pulling on the threads of the concepts of singleness and marriage.
[3:45] We're gonna do so in light of eternity. Now, when I think of the concepts of singleness and marriage in light of eternity, there's a scripture verse, or section of scripture, that immediately pops in mind, and it's Matthew 22, so that's gonna be kind of a core passage today. We're gonna look at a few other passages as well. Matthew 22, so the context of this passage of Scripture is Jesus is being approached by the Sadducees. If you've read the Gospels, there's kind of two groups that are, I mean, one group that's kind of on the fringes and one group that's always kind of picking at Jesus. That's the Pharisees. We'll get to them later. But the Sadducees, we read about the Sadducees. Well, we don't know a whole lot about them, to be quite honest, but the Scriptures themselves tell us that one of their key distinctives is that they don't believe in the resurrection. So that's going to matter a lot. So they're probing Him here about the resurrection.
[4:33] We're going to talk about that more later. And so there's a concept in Jewish law, which was possibly practiced at this time, we're not really sure, but it's called levirate. What that means is, if a man marries a woman and the man dies childless, the man's brother would be inclined to marry this woman, and then if they had kids, the child would be reckoned as the child of the first man, call him man A. So in this scenario, the Sadducees come to Him and they say, Hey, Jesus, man A marries a woman, dies childless. Man B, the brother, marries, just and dies childless. And then man C, it doesn't stand for anything, just C, he does the same thing, and then Delta and then Epsilon, and all the way through the seventh marriage.
[5:26] And they all die childless. And then this is the question, to say in the resurrection, which, remember, they don't believe in the resurrection, whose wife will the man be? The woman, sorry. So starting now in chapter 22, verse 29, it says, Jesus answered them, "You are deceived," or often other translations will say, "You're mistaken," or "You're in error, because you don't know the Scriptures or the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Now as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God? 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' He's not the God of the dead, but of the living." When the crowds heard this, they were amazed at His teaching. Now, in our time here this morning, we're going to have to define at least three, possibly four terms. And here's the first one we're going to talk about: heaven.
[6:27] Now often when we use the word heaven, we use it to kind of stand in for our positive version of whatever happens to come after this life. But that's not necessarily the only way to think about the concept of heaven. We already referenced the Lord's Prayer here this morning, you know, Our Father in heaven, Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Sometimes heaven is viewed up as a place right now that's somewhere else other than earth, where God is in complete and utter control. It's like able to overlap with our space, but it's not our space. But there's also this kind of third concept, which is just the heavens, like the skies, right? So you kind of have at least these three broad ways of talking about heaven. Well, to me, it seems pretty clear that Jesus is talking not at all about versions 2 and 3, but really about version 1, which is why they're poking at Him about this afterlife, the resurrection, or the age to come, as it might say elsewhere.
[7:23] The New Testament tends to describe this as a time in the future when all those of us who have ever lived are raised again with these new spiritual bodies. Now, some of us are going to be raised to eternal life and others will be raised some kind of eternal death. There's a lot of imagery going on here when you get through the Bible, and I don't want to get bogged down in that detail this morning, but thankfully I don't have to because Pastor Nathan did a phenomenal job preaching about these concepts of the afterlife very recently. So actually it was on January 29th. So if you want some homework, I recommend you check out that particular sermon. The reason that I am bringing it up here, though, is that It's worth noting that the global and historical Christian teaching that reaches all the way back to the New Testament and the words of Jesus Himself. It's not really this kind of culturally pervasive idea that when we die, we become some kind of disembodied Force ghost that goes off to some non-physical heaven for all of eternity, but rather we're offered a new place, a new place in a new Heaven and a new Earth, where they meet more fully and completely this humanity and divinity more fully and completely than we can even really understand in the here and now. So it's important for us at least this morning to understand these differences between the usage of heaven and this latter point, this new Heaven and Earth. This is what we're talking about this morning. Later on, we might try and clarify what we mean by art, but right now let's actually focus in on singleness and marriage.
[8:53] Singleness and marriage. They're often kind of understood as like opposite terms, right? So if, like, if one is single, then one is not married. And if one is married, then one is not single. It kind of makes sense. But in our local cultural context, we understand that there's kind of space between these two things, right, one can be both not single and not married. They're kind of like a spectrum or a polarity of sorts, if you will. So every person, though, every person is born single. And every one of us will live a large portion of our lives as single, and I try to do the math on it, but I couldn't really figure it out. It seems as though at least a lot of us will leave this life single as well. Singleness is a huge part of our lives.
[9:46] As we read in the words of Jesus just a few minutes ago, marriage is actually a temporary institution. It's meant for our lives on this side of eternity, contrary to, say, romantic plays like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. At some points in history, cultures have tended to maybe undervalue marriage, but at other times it has tended to overvalue marriage. But what exactly is marriage? Well, that can be a loaded question in our day and age, but I think the truth is that it's actually been a loaded question for as long as it has been an institution. And this morning, folks, I'm going to go out on a limb here a little bit. And so some of you know me very well, some of you have known me since I've been about this tall, some of you don't really know me very much, and some of you have literally just laid eyes on me for the first time this morning. So some of you have a good reason to know my normal demeanor and have a good reason to know my heart, but some of you not at all. It's my hope and prayer that you will believe the best and believe that I'm coming at this from a point of compassion and care. But ultimately, I care a little bit less about that and a lot more about the fact that it's my prayer that actually what you're hearing this morning is the voice and the words of God for you and for me in this space and not my own voice. And it might seem like I'm trying to tiptoe here. I'm not, but I am trying to be as clear and as compassionate as I can possibly be. So if you'll allow me just a couple of caveats.
[11:31] As far as I can tell, it's not the church's responsibility to dictate public policy. As far as I can tell, it's not the church's role to legislate morality. We're not here to define how people who do not follow Christ are to live. We are here to pray for and to love those people and to bear witness to what and to who we believe happens to be the way, the truth, and the life. Now, for most of you, I doubt that those are terribly controversial statements, but what might be slightly more controversial is my belief that the church does, in fact, exist, at least in part, to help people who want to follow Christ do so faithfully.
[12:20] Part of this does entail bearing witness to the truth of Scripture as revealed by and as confirmed by the Holy Spirit. And so the church is tasked with helping to define what marriage looks like for a follower of Christ. Now, we might call this Christian marriage. Okay, not legal marriage, not Canadian marriage, not modern marriage, not religious marriage, not tax status, not even the capacity of whether or not somebody has the ability to deeply love and commit to another person. None of those things. Just, just Christian marriage. When I say the church helps define Christian marriage, I don't mean by making up that definition, but by helping us to be faithful to the definitions and directions of Jesus Christ Himself. Christian And this section that I'm about to read this morning from chapter is actually from a few chapters earlier in the book of Matthew. We were reading Matthew 22 earlier.
[13:26] This is from Matthew chapter 19. I mentioned the Sadducees earlier. Well, here's our good, faithful friends, the Pharisees. So starting in verse 3 of chapter 19, some of these Pharisees came to Jesus in order to test Him, and they asked, "Is it lawful to divorce a wife for any cause?" And He answered, "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they're no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." And they said to him, "Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?"
[14:14] And Jesus said, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hard hearts, but from the beginning it was not this way. Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery." So Jesus here, He's defining not only the kinds of people who make up a Christian marriage, but also the level of commitment that marriage entails. It seems as though these particular Pharisees that were questioning Jesus, they were trying to somehow trap Him into implying that, because there were divorces that it happened in ancient Israel and likely divorces that were happening in their own day, and those divorces, they weren't exactly strictly censured by the religious leaders of the day. Then, well, divorces must be acceptable as a good thing, right?
[15:05] But Jesus seems to be unwilling to call something good which He doesn't consider good. I mean, one of the first times that Jesus shows up in the public scene, He reads from the book of Isaiah, and He would be aware of this particular section from Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20, that says, "Beware those who call evil good and good evil, who turned darkness into light and light into darkness, who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter." And so, church, I stand here and I walk here with tremendous fear and trembling. But I will say, it is not good for a Christian marriage to break. That there are justifiable reasons for it. Jesus Himself just said it, citing immorality, but that doesn't make divorce a good thing.
[16:00] Simply makes it a reality and what you might call, sometimes, a lesser of two evils in some scenarios, when unrepentant unfaithfulness is happening, or when, God forbid, people are being abused, leaving. The situation is almost always the right thing to do, but there is a grief at the loss of a Christian marriage, as there is a grief in the loss of a life. And I think we're gonna see, I hope we're gonna see, a little more clearly as we go why that might matter, and I hope that you're hearing me. I really genuinely do, because I had caveats that I put at the front and I have some caveats that I'm gonna throw at the back here. God can work all things together for good, and especially most thankfully in the things that are not themselves good. That's what He has the ability to do. So whatever situation we find ourselves in this morning, God can redeem that situation, and all of us.
[17:00] Every single one of us, me, all of us, are broken in different ways, and we're broken at different times. The reason this series is called Our Imperfect Family is because there are no perfect families, because there are no perfect people, but thanks be to God, He has grace, His grace, for all of us. But the Christian life, the Christian life is a life of repentance. It's a life of understanding and becoming aware of the ways in which we have failed to follow in His footsteps, receiving that free gift of mercy and grace that He offers to us, but then turning, then changing and repenting, and then following closer after Him. Now, how we have the ability to turn, whether it's God who does it for us or whether it's we who do it for ourselves, is the message that somebody else can preach some other day. But I can tell you pretty quickly one way that it's not going to happen: it won't happen by changing God's ways.
[18:05] You and I don't have the ability to do that. Oh, here, we're falling short of somebody else's standards. I know, let's just change those standards. I mean, my kids try this all the time. It's a very obvious thing to attempt, but we do not have the skill sets required to change God's will. We do have more than the skill sets required to deceive ourselves, though. And frankly, it seems as though a fair number of people in this day and age are deceived. And I don't think, I always say that there's maybe a very small handful of people, a few, who are purposely deceived, and they're trying to be, and they're trying to change the way that other people are intended to see truth as well, because that makes them feel more comfortable and they're hoping that it'll make other people feel more comfortable. But again, I think that is the overwhelming minority. I think most of us, in our deceptions, it's happened just because of the lives that we lead. It's just the air that we breathe. It's the, you know, the noise that we are constantly exposed to.
[19:15] It's the water we swim in. If I could find any more analogies, I would try. It's an uphill battle. One of my favorite things about this church is the fact that we are truly open and welcoming to all. There's no test for coming in. We don't ask what you believe. We don't ask how you've been living. We are glad that you are here, and it is an absolutely beautiful thing. Now, you know, 10 or 15 minutes into this message, I'm suddenly aware, though, of the fact that it can be a challenge sometimes, because there's no easy way sometimes to know who we're talking to. Hopefully it's at least been modestly clear, but let me try to clear it up. I'm only intending this morning, at least right now with this part of the message, to speak to Christians, to people who are intentionally and, you know, desiring to follow after the way of Christ when I talk about Christian marriage.
[20:13] Hopefully that was obvious, but I'm not talking to people who've yet to cross that line of faith. And so if that's you this morning, if you find yourself in the sound of my voice in any way, I hope that you're comfortable and I hope that you're willing to stay and to keep finding out what Jesus might have for you. There are some bitter pills sometimes in the messages that we need to hear, but there is a lot of gospel. There's a lot of grace, there's a lot of truth, and I believe that some of that is to come. But one last word here to my fellow believers before we move on. There is a really, really difficult line that I believe we're being called to walk today. It is the line, a balancing act between loving and accepting the world while not, well, not forgetting to hold fast to the truth of Scripture. It's a balancing act of trying to hold on to different standards for ourselves than we try to hold for other people.
[21:11] And it's a balancing act of not wanting to call evil good, even while praying for the good of people who might wish us evil. It's so difficult. It's nigh unto impossible, to be honest with you, but, friends, I believe it is the way of Christ and I believe it is the way of the cross. So if you were still with me, all that was a long, maybe too long, of a build up to set up the idea that what Jesus seems to be saying here, when we read these passages of Scripture, is that He would define marriage, Christian marriage, as a union between one man and one woman, and one that's intended to be until death do them part. And Jesus, after He unpacked this understanding of marriage to the Pharisees, this relatively high understanding of marriage, His own disciples turn to Him and they say, this is Matthew 19, starting in verse 10, "If this is the case of a husband with a wife, it is better not to marry."
[22:10] They seem to get it. And He said to them, "Not everyone can accept this statement, except those to whom it has been given. For there are some eunuchs who were that way from birth, and some who were made eunuchs by others, and some who became eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept this should accept it." Now, here's a question for you. Y'all know what eunuchs are? Well, that's fun. So for those of you who are sensitive of hearing, this is a three second warning that we're kind of moving into some sensitive territory here. Okay. So time delay on the, okay. So the word that we translate into English as eunuch is a Greek word that essentially means, what would it mean? It would be a male whose reproductive organs are not intact.
[23:01] If they were a bull, they would be castrated, is how you maybe refer to that. So that would be the literal interpretation of what the word eunuch might mean, but obviously this text here has a bit of a metaphorical twist to it as well, or non-literal one, because it says that some people are born eunuchs, others were made that way, likely by their masters if they happen to be slaves, and still others became eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. That's the quote, "became eunuchs." Other translations will nuance that last part a little differently. They'll say something like "live as eunuchs" or "become like eunuchs," and though there's some debate in how best to render this, here's what's not really up for debate, which is what eunuchs don't do. Mainly, eunuchs don't engage in sexual activity. Why, if they're literal eunuchs, they can't, and if they're metaphorical eunuchs, they don't, and the implication here is, because they're not married and in the Christian worldview, Christian marriage is the only relationship that's suited as a home for sexual activity. And so we took a good amount of time to define what Christian marriage might look like, but what about Christian singleness? I don't really want to cop out and just say, well, it's the opposite of being married. I feel like that kind of undervalues some things.
[24:17] We have not only the words of Jesus above that. We just read that really seems to speak well of singleness, but we also have the Apostle Paul who, like Jesus, appears to be a lifelong dedicated celibate and spoke very highly about singleness as well. He wrote a letter to the Corinthian church, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and he says it is good not to marry, which is surprising, and then also adds in verse 7. So 1 Corinthians 7:7, "I wish that all of you were as I am. But then, catch this, he says: But each of you has your own gift from God." As I read this and thought about it, it struck me anew: Christian singleness is a gift from God.
[25:06] Christian singleness is a gift from God. Then we don't have time to get into the reasons, all the reasons why perhaps marriage does end up being the normative kind of way of life in our world, but children is part of it. But you don't miss this: Christian singleness is a gift from God. It's a gift that we will all steward at one time or another. So whether you're a teenager or a young adult within the sound of my voice who is hoping one day to be married, or an adult who has yet to find the right person, or perhaps is finding themselves in a season where they're just not married at this point, or maybe you're even one of our older saints who is at the point of life where their spouse is no longer with them and remarriage is less likely, hear this: Your singleness is a gift from God.
[25:55] It is a gift. And like many gifts of God, it might not be one that you want. As I understand it, God doesn't tend to ask us too often what kind of gifts we want. That seems to not really be how He does things. He is way more interested in what we do with the gifts that He has given us. Both Jesus and Paul, they point to a group of people for whom Christian singleness is not just a seasonal thing, but it's really their whole lifestyle. Like Jesus said, there are some who are born in such a way that celibacy is their default, and there are others who have become that way through no choosing of their own, and still others who have received a special gift, a gift that enables them to embrace this difficult teaching and to remain a celibate example of Christian singleness for their whole lives.
[26:54] If I had some more time this morning, I would love to be able to unpack the conundrum, the problem that a lot of these wonderful, beautiful, lifelong celibates face. Namely, it really does seem as though our world is made for married people. And what makes me sadder is that it kind of seems like all too often the church is also made for married people. It's difficult to value one appropriately without sometimes undervaluing the other. Hear this: a life of Christian singleness should never be a life of loneliness, especially not for the Christian, not for the one who has found a church home. And I don't have any easy answers to this, this morning. I wish that I did.
[27:42] But I do want you to know that we're aware of it as a church, and we're praying for direction. We're praying for you, and we're hoping that together, those of you who have this gift, we can work together to be a positive reflection to the community around us. All right. So, singleness, marriage, heaven. We haven't defined art yet, though. That's the easiest one for sure, right? That'd be good. Well, art is actually ridiculously difficult to define. I won't take much time with it this morning. Here's what I'm gonna do. This is gonna be surprising. I'm gonna throw back to not one but a second sermon that Pastor Nathan preached very recently. So, do you guys know we have a podcast? So if you're like, "I don't want to go on Facebook. I don't want to go on YouTube," we have a podcast, so you can check out this one here, which I believe was from January 8th, where Pastor Nathan did a wonderful job of unpacking the theology of work. What is the theology of work? And why would I mention work when I'm talking about art in heaven? Right? Well, I promise it has something, again, with heaven. A lot of us have this kind of like picture of this Zen-like nirvana, blissed-out state of, you know, Sunday afternoon nap, like, for eternity, and work should be nowhere near what happens after this life, right? Work sounds a lot more like hell than heaven to a lot of people, but that is not what Bible seems to portray in terms of the age to come. If I can go back into Isaiah again, chapter 65. This is from verses 21 to 23. And this would have been a key passage for, especially, ancient Israel when they thought about the hope of the age to come. It says, "They will build houses and they'll dwell in them. They will plant vineyards, and they'll eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people.
[29:38] My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune, for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them." So subcreation, you know, manual labor, making things with your hands, surely certainly seems like that has life in the life to come. But when it comes to art, what about things like aesthetics and beauty and those kind of qualities that we tend to think about when it comes to art? Is there any opportunity or value for that in eternity? Well, I mean, beginning of the book is Genesis, to the end of the book is Revelation. That's kind of how it goes from left to right, for you guys who are in mirror mode. And so the very last page of the Bible, Revelation chapter 21. I mean, you're like at the tail end.
[30:30] There's this beautiful picture of what it's called the New Jerusalem, which is kind of like this city that is emblematic of the new heavens and new earth. So when I read from Revelation chapter 21, starting at verse 22, it says, "I did not see a temple in the city," in this New Jerusalem, "because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it."
[31:24] This New Jerusalem, this picture of heaven, of heaven meeting earth. I mean, it can't need anything, right? I mean, perfection doesn't need anything. It didn't need redecoration. It doesn't need sprucing up. Some reason it says here that the people of this age they're able to bring into this perfected reality some bits of splendor, some bits of glory. It's almost like adding to perfection. I was trying to think about it. I'm not much of a baker, but just something about, like, putting a little bit of cinnamon or sprinkles on top of what is already an immaculate cake, or like, you know, just the right Instagram filter on a picture of the Mona Lisa or something, right? It can seem so trivial.
[32:15] But we're still invited to be a part of it. So if art is defined by creation and beauty, well, I would say that at least there is a Christian case for that kind of art in heaven. But conversations around art often kind of geared towards the esoteric, the hoity-toity a little bit, and they start to think about, you know, what about high art, whatever, and that kind of art is often characterized as this ability to use art to show you something that is invisible, to make seen something that is unseen, to make tangible this intangible yearning for something beyond life, for eternity, for meaning, for God. And here, my friends, finally at the tail end of all things, I have been able to weave together these strands we've been talking about this morning, right? So we have heaven, and we have art, and we have singleness, and we have marriage, and we have Jesus. But I told you it was gonna happen. They're all gonna weave together here into this beautiful tapestry of meaning, this completeness, something that I believe is really, really good news in the passage from Revelation. Check this out, the passage, Revelation, we just read. Why is there no sun?
[33:32] Why no sun? Because the sun was imperfectly fulfilling an incomplete role of providing warmth and heat. It did it, but, hey, when the real thing comes, the real light, the real source of hope and heat, the sun like the Son of God. We no longer need the sun. Why, in Revelation 21, in the New Jerusalem, is there no temple? Because the temple was only incompletely fulfilling this partial job of providing a hosting spot between heaven and earth. But now in Christ that is complete, and it's perfected. And why, at the beginning of our time together this morning, when we were reading the words of Jesus, why would He say that in the age to come, in the resurrection, might marriage not be needed?
[34:20] Is that because marriage is a bad thing? No, obviously not. It is because, just like the art that we just talked about, the kind of art that is supposed to give you a glimpse behind the curtain. Because neither that kind of art nor marriage will be required in the age to come, because marriage exists for us in the here and now as an image of the relationship between God and His people. It is literally all throughout the Bible, all through the Old Testament, all throughout the New Testament. I would be overwhelming you to even give you a survey of the amount of times that we see this imagery. But one of the most famous and perhaps infamous places to look for teaching on marriage in the New Testament are the letters of Paul, and in his letter to the Ephesians, in the fifth chapter, Paul quotes the same passage of Scripture that Jesus did from Genesis chapter 2, but he gives it a little twist this time. We'll start Ephesians 5:29.
[35:21] He says, "No one has ever hated his own body, but he feeds it. He takes care of it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. And for this reason," there's the Genesis, "for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is great." But hey, listen, "but I am actually speaking with reference to Christ and the church." There's the twist. See here. We see marriage is laid out for us as a living metaphor. We're all familiar with metaphors. We kind of know how this works, right? In a metaphor, you go from the one that you seem to understand the best to the one that you understand the least.
[36:07] And so we're typically inclined to view the marriage relationship as essentially the default, the human one, and then we project from there onto what the relationship between Christ and His people should be like. But here's the actual twist is: It's reversed. It's upside down. It's not that the God-human relationship looks like a marriage relationship. It's that the marriage relationship is supposed to look like the God-human relationship. And in the resurrection, the image of marriage won't be required, because the clear and certain reality of the fact that we are united with Christ will be evident, plain all around us, or as it says in another letter that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which I think somewhat ironically is read at almost every wedding ceremony that I've ever been to, starting at verse 10, it says, "When completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
[37:13] For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, and then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." So will there be art in heaven? Will there be art in the age to come? I have no idea. Will there be marriage in heaven? Will singleness be the one that wins out in the end? Matthew 22:29, Jesus answered them, "You're deceived. You're mistaken. Because you don't know the Scriptures or the power of God." So here's what I know for myself to be true.
[37:59] I don't know always whether we could, it's best for us to say that marriage is the ideal. I don't know if it's better for us to say the singleness is the ideal. The Bible seems to allow room for both of them, and it would really seem unwise for us to try to create a hard and fast rule where the Bible doesn't. The default mode for most Christians throughout history has been to seek out marriage. And for those who feel like lifelong celibacy, lifelong singleness, is the call for them, it has been cautioned that they do so carefully and only if they feel like they have a special gift in that direction. It's a difficult path, but I want us to remember this: that singleness is a gift from God. A gift for those who are single, and a gift for the broader church. And we don't have time this morning to go through, thankfully, each and every one of our own scenarios and try to pick out the different nuances that we have. But whether this morning you are married or single, whether you've been married for five days or whether you've been married for five decades, whether your season of singleness has turned out to be a little bit longer than you would hope it was, or, you know, whether you've recently come alive for the fact that maybe this is actually the life that you need to embrace, whether the strongest temptations in your life are temptations towards sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage, or whether the strongest temptations in your life are temptations to anger, or to envy, or to pride, or to greed, it doesn't matter, because every person here, all of us who are called to follow after Christ, all of us are going to have to deny ourselves in certain ways.
[39:39] And here's the even tougher news: that once we have submitted one thing to Christ, He tends to reveal to us another thing for us to submit. He is gentle, He is kind, He is loving, He is patient, and He is unrelenting in His pursuit of holiness for His people and His pursuit of holiness for His Bride. So yeah. There is some tough news. There's also some really good news, guys. You, I, we were made to be united with the living God for all of eternity, with the source of life, the Creator of all, and to be united by imaging Christ. So whether we image Him in our singleness or image Him in our marriage, either way, we can only do so with the gifts that He Himself gives us. And it's helpful for us to know both, as we've read multiple times in Matthew 22, both the Scriptures and the power of God, the Scriptures and the power of God, the path and the path that leads to the power. And so this morning, church, just have one question for me and one question for you.
[41:08] In light of the Scriptures and the power of God, what is the Lord asking of me today in my singleness, in my marriage? What is the Lord asking of me today? I'm going to invite the prayer team forward. For the rest of you, I'm gonna ask you to remain seated for just a few moments here. And if you're comfortable with it, even those of you who are joining us online, I would ask you to take a moment and ponder that one question quietly to yourself. What is the Lord asking of me today in light of the Scriptures, in light of the power of God, in view of eternity?
[41:58] What should I do today? Ponder that for just one moment together.