Join me in prayer. Father, we do commit to you our hearts right now. We recognize this morning that we have the great privilege of entering into heaven in a sense. But we know that the only way that can happen is if you pierce out of the clouds as it were and enter into our hearts. For my words are empty human words in and of themselves and all that we do during this time is empty if you are not present. If you are not bringing the miraculous out of that which is ordinary. So we come to you now and ask you to make us alive in Christ that we might see and hear the things that you have for us this morning. Amen. One of the things that Ellen and I frequently laugh about is that we have observed that frequently couples who've been married a long time end up looking like each other. Have you ever noticed this? It is actually frightens my wife as she looks at me and if that weren't enough Ellen has actually observed that sometimes older couples end up looking like they're dog and I suppose that's why we don't own a dog. In a Christian marriage it ought to be a little bit different. It ought to be that not only are you growing to look a little bit more like each other but you ought to be individually and together growing to look more like Jesus Christ. It's very interesting we've talked about it before but God made human beings in a way that was distinct from all other objects of this creation. He made up in his image that is that we in some manner reflect him just like a king in the ancient Near East would want his presence to be really known and felt in all of his provinces so he would erect magnificent statues so that people would look at that you of him and therefore know his presence and reality and in a sense that's how it is with human beings that we represent God before the world but you know the story as it goes forth that human beings were belled and there was a great shipwreck called the fall. What happened with that is that the image of God and man it wasn't completely obliterated but it was the face wasn't erased it was defaced it was marred and so now if you look at human beings you see some semblance of God but it's not like it ought to be. One of the things the Bible emphasizes I think is that human relationships are used by God is one of the vehicles through which he transforms us more and more into his image and I think it stands the reason therefore if that's the case and just run a male human relationship then it then the marriage relationship the most intimate and personal relationship above all God uses those relationships as a transforming agent and so one of the purposes we're talking about the purposes of marriage these first several weeks as we explore the greater subject of marriage one of the purposes of marriage is that marriage is designed to be a transformational vehicle in your life it's designed to change you the some of you are going great because I want my spouse to change but it's designed to change you and your spouse is one of the ways that God goes about his work of changing us. Now we want to first explore this that very point that marriage is a transformational agent of God and then we want to look at some of the obstacles that stand in the way why is it that that doesn't happen more frequently and then some of the the helps the how-tos of what we can apply to our lives so that our marriage will be more effective in the Lord's hands so let me open by reading some of what is the permanent passage in the Bible on marriage Ephesians chapter five I'm just going to read some of it this morning we'll get more into it in detail in a couple of weeks marriage is most clearly explained in Ephesians five and I'm going to begin with verse 25 this is Ephesians five 25 husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church without staying or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless in the same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies he who loves his wife loves himself and after all no one ever hated his own body but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body this is God's word now one of the things that we see here is that marriage is a cleansing agent specifically relating the husband to the wife the husband is compared to Christ and as I said we're going to get into this in more detail in a couple of weeks but what I want you to see now is that Christ what he is doing with his people with his church is he is giving them a bath he's cleansing them over time and the husband in the way that he is the love his wife it should be sort of an efficacious love a love that has a fact it should be a cleansing love but what I want to suggest to you is while that that's how preeminent importance for the husband that there is a reciprocal cleansing there as well Paul just doesn't happen to get into it in this passage he does get into it though in other many other places in the Bible in fact just in chapter 4 right before you get to chapter 5 he talks about this says in Ephesians 4 verse 25 therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor where we are all members of one body see how relationships together one body in Christ the church it's very important it's critical how we treat each other because we are in effect conduits of grace avenues through which the Lord works in our life it says more specifically in verse 29 of chapter 4 do not let any and wholesome thought come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen in other words be very careful in your discussions with one another the words you use use only words that are helpful what's the point there that our very words our instruments are vehicles through which the Lord works helpful for building others up for making the more the people that God intends them to be in other words it's very important in all of our relationships how we treat one another because we are cleansing agents agents of change and transformation and therefore it's right after that that he goes into talking about the marriage relationship similarly in Colossians chapter 3 the apostle Paul essentially says that what's happening in the Christian's life is that they are being renewed more and more after the image of their creator now you pick up that language of image it's what we talked about at the beginning that Adam and Eve you and I were created in God's image but because of rebellion that image was marred but now in Christ there is a renewing of that image so the Christian is one who is looking more and more like Christ that's what Paul says in Colossians 3 definitely talks about right after that the marriage relationship but it's unmistakable that you and I just in our average relationships our instruments of transformation in each other's lives all the more argument from the lesson to the greater in a marriage relationship that's the case and the thinking here is that sin is very dangerous, sin is poisonous, sin is a great disease and a great evil that is killing and has killed us and what we need is for other people to come alongside of us and help us to see our sin because it tries to disguise itself in us we need people to help us see our sin so that Christ can bring about the remedy in our lives and that's what marriage is therefore that you are married to someone else to be a mirror to them of how they really are and vice versa and so it's not infrequent when someone just after they're newly married will tell me boy I'll say how's married life you know that dreading question if you're a newlywed how's married life and I'll say boy I didn't know I was such a sinner until I got married or they might see I didn't know my wife was such a sinner until I got married it's because marriage is that mirror that shows us the way we really are and and reveals all the flaws it's it's sort of like if you've gone to a side show to circus and you look in one of those goofy mirrors that show you it's sort of a distorted or marred figure that's how it is we are marred because of our sin that beauty that gloriness of God's image and so our marriage is a vehicle given by God to help us see that and then to clean up and transform us and recreate us ran across a great quote but I do not remember I lost who said it but let's assume that there's someone very prestigious and they said this they said in a context of marriage one encounters the possible redemption of the full life the retrospective healing of your personal history the thorough conversion of one's biography is a divine work begun in this life and it would seem that God has invested the marriage relationship with sufficient emotional power to challenge the authority of accumulated biographical biographical verdicts and to thereby redeem the past that's a mouthful but that is a powerful a couple of sentences there that marriage is re-creational and it God has invested in marriage its ability to sort of reprogram the individual here's the idea every human being is affected by the fall of Adam and Eve every single human being and then we affect other people with the way we've been affected so there is sort of a an effect of the dominoes there so that let's say for instance you've grown up in a family where the mother is very controlling and the mother has essentially imbred in you the concept that you're worthless or maybe it was the father that did this and they're wonderful good people but nevertheless they've sort of instilled this thinking in you when you come into marriage you're going to naturally assume that your spouse is going to treat you that way that your spouse is going to feed you that sort of controlling negative ism but what your spouse can do what you've got the power to do is to come in and reprogram that person that if if in effect if everyone thinks that you're ugly but your spouse thinks you're beautiful you think you're beautiful and the conversation is true as well if the whole world thinks you're beautiful and thinks you're wonderful but your spouse thinks you're ugly or worthless that's what you begin to think like and this amazing power to program the way that you think about yourself now there's two sort of areas I think that that this power and marriage begins to unleash itself upon is what you might call blind spots that is that all of us have areas in our life that we that we've either grown numb to or that we're not aware of it's like we are cottage not cottage cheese but Swiss cheese and we're full of holes but we can't see the whole piece of cheese at once we need someone else to come along side of us to help us see that to see the missing holes the blind spots areas of our life maybe maybe that I'm a bigot and I've just grown so accustomed to thinking of people in those judgmental ways and thinking that my social group or my ethnic group is superior towards second nature because my family thought that way and and I think that way and my friends ones that tolerate me they think that way and and so there's that blind spot there but your spouse comes along side and shows you that Swiss cheese and that need for change maybe maybe it's that you've grown so accustomed to the cult of beauty that you've never met a mirror you didn't like I mean you've never met a magazine on beauty that you couldn't pick up and and pour yourself into and and you've grown so accustomed to that and your sisters were that way your mother was that way so that now you don't even know it's a problem and tell your spouse come along side and and reveals that that's an issue in your life there's also besides blind spots just blatant idols things that you know are wrong in your life areas that need revealing the mirror needs to show them forth and they need cleansing but you're not willing to deal with it and as we talked about last week I think it was in most relationships most friendships if there's something offensive about you most friends can distance themselves enough so that the offense is not too great and that distance is them from your offense but also distances you from facing that area of your life what marriage does is it makes you very uncomfortable makes you it forces you to see yourself as you really are in those blatant areas so it's a mirror that shows you the way that you really are to put it differently marriage is confrontational yet it's like someone comes up in in shouts in your face that there's something that needs to be addressed only they don't shout hopefully it's simply their presence the existence of that type of intimacy that begins to reveal these things in your life and so you need cleansing you need a bath that's what Paul is talking about all Christians need the bath of Christ they need it regularly but it's not talking about some sweet fun bubble bath okay it's like if you have been beaten and bruised if you ever gone and tried to place a child who's just skinned themselves all up and placed them in a warm bubble bath this screen it's painful it's not pleasant and that's what it's what it's like in marriage that that cleansing is a painful thing but it's very necessary marriage reveals these things it's it's like if there's a great earthquake in a city and a number of buildings collapse and fall to the ground others stand and seem to be barely moved why well assuming that the earthquake hit them evenly same way then there's something different about the buildings inherent to them even though you couldn't see them from the outside there were structural flaws in the building so the earthquake didn't create the problems it just revealed the problems that were already there in marriage marriage becomes that greater earthquake it's a huge earthquake that reveals the structural flaws in your life and you can run and hide you can avoid them you can blame it on your spouse but ultimately it comes in as confrontational to you and it shows you these things that you don't want to hear a couple weeks ago I was in a store looking for something and I heard in my pocket this noise I was my cellular phone I picked it up and it said you have five more seconds to leave a message I thought oh my goodness I've been recording a message what had happened was at some point in my car I had maybe hit my the send button on my phone with the steering wheel or something and it had redialed the previous number that I had dialed and so I was leaving on someone's voicemail all of my conversation for the last you know five minutes or so and that's a scary thought there's nothing you can do about it see it's kind of like that that someone is coming in and they're hearing all these things about you all these these series of conversations that you were having with yourself that no one ever knew about because you looked beautiful from the outside now your spouse comes the wrong side and they go I heard all about that that you were thinking I heard all that conversation and we need to deal with it now what are some of the obstacles that come to bear upon this what are some of the things that stand in the way well one of the things is that you can actually reinforce your spouse's idolatrous patterns you can create sort of a co-dependency it's like saying in effect I won't talk to you about your heroin problem if you won't talk to me about my cocaine problem and so you kind of develop this business relationship a business partnership exists for the mutual benefit of the partners and so you don't invade their world as long as they don't invade jurors you've got ammunition therefore but you stay back as long as they don't use it against you and so it's sort of a co-dependency that develops I won't talk to you about your bigotry if you won't talk to me about my materialism you see how it works another barrier that that can get in the way of this is really just the opposite it's where you do view these things as ammunition and you view yourself as sort of the the police force of the family someone makes a violation and you pointed out to them you blow the whistle you're the law and you explain these things to them and you use it as ammunition against them sort of to take revenge that certainly gets in the way of it because it forces your spouse to clam up and not open up with you another thing that you can do is hide from your spouse simply close the door they begin to see in that you know that the door is unbeknownst to you cracked open they move in they begin to see some things and you slam the door shut Mike Mason said this he said one of the hardest things about marriage is the feeling of being watched do you remember that feeling if you've been married a long time when you just got married you thought goodness she sees me doing everything there's no privacy and particularly if you're single for a long time that sense of independence where you certainly have your carved out spaces of independence from your spouse that that violation is huge and your tendency will be just to slam the door shut into certain areas of your life and not let them in another way that people handle this I don't think many people do this but there's some out there that do this it's basically you decide to live in a fantasy world this is another obstacle to letting your relationship be used as an instrument of grace you you you essentially let your marriage become a fantasy world you don't ever want to see that there's a flaw in your spouse and so you you paint this rosy picture that there's really no problems there in them and and a problem with that you know you can mistake it as loving them as Christ loves you but that's really not the case Christ doesn't pretend that we don't sin it's just the opposite quite the opposite Christ looks at us and sees the very depths of the Swiss cheese in our life he sees all the holes he sees all the poison and he loves us to be transforming in it and so to simply pretend like your spouse is perfect an angel is completely unbiblical you must assume as the Bible does your spouse is completely depraved like you are and because of that that healthy view not a miserable view it opens you up to being a loving transforming agent in your life now what are some of the helps is we kind of bring this together to effectively be used of the Lord in this way to be a mirror to show a person the way they really are but also to be a cleansing agent to be a bath for them well you've got to give your spouse access you've got to give your spouse access to your life if you expect him to give you access to their life you got to open the door and let them in of course there's a sewer waiting on the other end of the door but there's a sewer that is waiting to be transformed into a glorious palace but there's great ballrooms and so you assume that that's the way it is and you give an access Tim Keller puts it this way he says you clean your teeth you clean your fingernails you excrete the most private things you do in life the Bible says that when you get married your spouse has that kind of access to you and that means that your spouse will see and take part in cleaning the dirt to put it in star track terms your spouse will go where no man has gone before if you hate this and resent it then you don't understand a Christian marriage if you simply look at your spouse and pretend that the things aren't there then you're not doing them any favor you don't understand a Christian marriage but also if you don't give your spouse access to your life then you don't understand a Christian marriage as well it's like if you see someone have you ever seen someone like a couple weeks ago I went to lunch with someone in a very nice restaurant and got in my car after the lunch and looked in the mirror and I had this big piece of black something a little snack for later on right here in between my teeth and you know it's one of those that clearly was not hidden by my lip throughout the meal they could have done the courtesy to tell me about it in marriage that's what it is the lip can hide it for most people but not in your marriage and you need to give them access so they can point it out because otherwise sin is embarrassing before the world. Secondly it's important how you respond when someone when your spouse does open themselves up to you if you laugh or yon or make fun of them or use it as ammunition against them if you develop a critical spirit it's not going to work they'll close up and leave you behind in it you won't be effective in that way you need to go about thirdly setting a culture in your marriage a culture that opens up yourself and your spouse to being a mirror and a bath at the same time and let me just give you quickly a couple of things that go in with that first of all both of you need to understand that you're worse off than you think that you are more sinful than you would ever think you are that's the first thing why because secondly you need to see that sin is killing you and it's killing your spouse so in other words you don't criticize it's not giving you a license to criticize your spouse it's giving you a license to be to be empathetic with them to pity them and for them to pity you and to desire that that which is poisoning you would be stricken from your body thirdly that the gospel of grace would become the air that you breathe that you would understand that though you are worse than you think and that sin is killing you in Christ you are more loved and accepted than you would ever think and that becomes this liberating agent so that you're free to open up to your spouse and then free to open up with you and then finally that you and your spouse would see that you have a purpose in each other's lives that every conversation you have that every problem with communication I mean there's really no real problems with communication that's not the problem it's the selfishness behind the communication that's the problem and when we begin to see conversely that we have a divine purpose of grace through our words to say only things that will build up our spouse to being an open artery of the flow of the blood of the gospel to our spouse that's what we need I've got to pull this together running out of time but let me just make a brief directive to those of you that are single if you're if you're a Christian this is why it's absolutely critical that you marry a Christian because a non-Christian has no capacity to be both a mirror and a basti they can be a mirror to you and show you all the things that are wrong but they cannot be a conduit of grace to you because they don't understand the gospel it also is important to understand that if you're a single person that this isn't restricted to marriage relationships in very good healthy relationships with other individuals this same dynamic can be at work but you've got to really work at it so that you don't distance yourself from that person and then if you're a single to ask the question when you're thinking through about marrying someone does this person make me holy do they do they make me first for holiness either by seeing who I am and presenting me with the gospel or in their own life modeling it bottom line our souls are like overly populated cities with with great edifices all over the place and what you've got is when you get married it's the merging of two cities into one now in order to be able to merge two cities into one you've got to implode some of the buildings that are there you've got to wipe out a number of the things and bring them down and that's that's painful but it's not bad if you understand that those buildings are rat infested they like tenement houses they need to come down because what God is doing through your marriage is building a great new palace a glorious city resembling himself let those buildings be imploded let those rat infested edifices come down let your spouse be a mirror through which you see the way you really are so that the grace of Christ will be transformational will be real will be powerful and constructing you the glory of the image of God of fresh let's pray father we thank you that there is a great and grand and holy purpose and marriage we want you to make this purpose for us your own to make us what you want us to be through marriage we ask this through Christ our Lord amen