One of a Kind Marriage, Part 2

In my last Blog, I encouraged you that Christ is your Husband and we are His Bride. Jesus pursues us actively securing a lasting intimate relationship with us. And yet even in God’s stubborn love for us in our marriage with Christ, we still struggle with other loves in our lives.

Here the Apostle Paul reminds in 2 Corinthian 11:3:

3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.


How do we struggle to desire and love Christ in this sacred marriage?

Paul fears and rightly so that the Corinthians will be seduced to unfaithfulness by other false loves. Their past has proven his concern. They had allowed other things (e.g., pride, sexual immorality, forsaking the poor) to lead them astray from a growing relationship with Jesus.

He reminds them of the Fall when Satan tempted Eve and she was deceived. When her heart desired the fruit more than God, she lost and left her first love and turned to other things to make her complete and satisfied. She began to doubt God’s goodness and truth and this led her to replace God with other things—to be like God, gain knowledge, and experience “true happiness.” You can see the affects of Eve leaving the Lover of her soul— she hides and blames others for her sin. She now gets her satisfaction from loving other things rather than God.

We do not have to stop with Eve. Throughout Biblical history God’s people have struggled to remain faithful, chaste, and pure to their covenant vows to God. Here these graphic descriptions of God’s people unfaithfulness to their marriage to Christ found in Scripture:

“If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 3:1)

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore (were unfaithful) because of your renown and lavished your whorings (unfaithfulness) on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore (were unfaithful). The like has never been, nor ever shall be. (Ezekiel 16:15-16)

12 My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. (Hosea 4:12)

In these passages, God is denouncing their unfaithfulness to Him as spiritual adultery. Paul warns the Corinthian church and us of a similar struggle in this passage. We will commit spiritual adultery.

In fact, we need to know what may lead our hearts astray. For we are tempted and often times give into the temptation of being unfaithful to God and committing spiritual adultery.

God knows that we can and will be deceived like Eve, and to love other things more than God. Often these other things drive us away from our marriage with Christ. Seeking comfort, peace, power and position are such competing lovers. Our obsession with our reputation, respect and approval interferes with our relationship with Jesus, and they become more meaningful to us than Jesus. Our pursuit of career, possessions, physical health, strength, and obedient children can also lead us astray from the One who loves us completely and thoroughly. Not that any of those things are evil or wrong in themselves. But when we allow ourselves to be ruled by them more than Jesus and his love, then we will become complacent and unmoved by our Husband and his pursuing and stubborn love.

Friends, I know that this is true. One such competing love in my relationship with Jesus is my obsession with order and respect. If the house doesn’t look a certain way and I am not resting in Jesus and his love for me, I can become angry with my wife and children and say things that are manipulating and hurtful to get my way. What’s going on? I fear that they are not respecting me when they don’t keep the house in order. Because I find more value and satisfaction in an ordered house than in Jesus and all that he has provided me in the gospel, I show what I am really loving, serving and worshipping—myself.

Every false love promises to free us so that we finally feel good about ourselves—about our place and performance in life. The substances we choose to provide us life—i.e., alcohol, money, spiritual performance, sexuality, knowledge, etc.—suck us into varying degrees of dependence and addiction. False loves promise a life of purpose, peace, control and affirmation, but they cannot deliver the goods. The only deceive and destroy. Our false loves either in religious or irreligious forms are just “a destructive mirage full of empty IOUs”, says Scotty Smith.

So God in this sacred marriage desires for you to come and to honestly confess the competing false loves in your life—to acknowledge your unfaithfulness and run to your Husband and find forgiveness and rest. He delights to provide it!

What are your false loves? Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see what is leading your astray from your sincere and pure devotion with Jesus. He desires for you to find rest and freedom for your souls so that you can experience a growing intimacy and confidence with Him.

My next Blog, we will consider:
Even though we are unfaithful to Jesus as we struggle with our false loves, He is never unfaithful to us. Jesus is the end of our struggle to find life in our false loves.

Pastor Jeff

One of a Kind Marriage

I am thinking a lot about can I encourage you in your relationship with Jesus. One such amazing reality that we have as followers of Jesus and one in which I want to encourage you is that we are married to Jesus.

Have you ever thought of your relationship with God as a marriage? Some of us approach our Christian life as a business, a well-planned program or an educational pursuit. But Paul in the below passage reminds us that the Christian life is much more intimate, much more personal and much more relational. Paul is jealous that you understand and experience the deep rich love relationship that Jesus has with you. Let’s hear what he has to say.

2 Corinthians 11:1-3:
I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

Scotty Smith in his book Reign of Grace writes “As God’s image bearers, there is romance DNA written into every cell of our being. The craving to be championed and cherished shows up in our art, advertisements, arguments—anywhere you look.” John Eldredge, in his book Sacred Romance which depicts our love relationship with Christ, writes “The Romance has most often come to us in the form of two deep desires: the longing for adventure that requires something of us, and the desire for intimacy—to have someone truly know us for ourselves, while at the same time inviting us to know them in the naked and discovering way lovers come to know each other on the marriage bed.”

Amazingly, the more we immerse ourselves in God’s story of redemption found in Scripture, the more as Scotty Smith describes “we find ourselves revealed not as hopeless romantics finally getting asked to the ball, but as irresponsible prostitutes becoming the beloved queen of the King of glory, Jesus.” To say it another way, Cinderella is not the biblical version of the one of a kind sacred marriage with have with Christ. The biblical version of the one of a kind sacred marriage is if one of the ugly, envious, conniving stepsisters was being wanted, wooed, and won by the passionate affections and amazing sacrifice of the Great Prince. This is what Christ has done for us.

Paul gives us in this passage a beautiful metaphor of God’s faithful and jealous love towards us because we are married to Christ. Christ is our Husband, we are His Bride.

What does God want us to believe about our sacred marriage?
Paul is speaking with the affection of a father. He is jealous for the Corinthian’s purity of heart in relation to Christ. He passionately desires for them to believe that they have an intimate and sacred relationship with God that God brought about because of his love for them. As it is custom for the father to give his daughter in marriage to an approved bridegroom, so Paul, their spiritual father, had given them in betrothal to one husband, a Divine Husband—Jesus Christ. The betrothal of a maiden implies purity and faithfulness; she is committed to the one man to whom she is engaged to be married.

The ancient customs saw the betrothal not like we view engagement where either party can back out before the wedding and there no legal consequence of breaking an engagement. A betrothal was an ironclad contract that could be severed only by unfaithfulness or death. Though the couple might not celebrate and consummate their marriage for years, legally they were still considered married.

One commentator states, “by adding the word one Paul stresses the truth that, just as the marriage relationship is exclusive, so believers in Christ owe an exclusive loyalty to Him.”

Paul is looking future—as it is the father’s prerogative to present the bride to her husband on the wedding day: Paul anticipates with joy the presentation of his Corinthian believers as a faithful and undefiled virgin to Christ, when at Christ 2nd Coming, He takes His bride to Himself and brings her to that forever home which Christ has gone to prepare. It is then that the marriage of Christ with His Church will be celebrated amidst the rejoicing in heaven.

The OT frequently speaks of God’s people as the spouse of the LORD.

For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. (Isaiah 54:5)

For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)

When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine.
(Ezekiel 16:8)

And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. (Hosea. 2:19, 20)

These very words from God describe our relationship with Christ in very intimate terms—so intimate that it is almost embarrassing! But this is what is so amazing about the gospel. God reconciles sinners to himself through Christ and welcomes us into a relationship that is intensely personal. He does not simply tolerate us in this marriage; he brings us close to himself by giving Himself to us. This is covenantal language not some prenuptial agreement with conditions or escape clause but a lasting commitment and the penalty to breaking it was death.

Christ is our husband and we are his bride. We are married to Christ. We are the objects of his affections. And in turn, we are to make him the object of our affection sharing with nothing and no one else! That is why Paul speaks as a jealous father who wants nothing to disrupt, compromise or interfere with this relationship.

Friends, be encouraged in what God has accomplished for you. Jesus is pursuing you right now even in the midst of the messiness of your life to make you his holy and undefiled bride.

Do you believe it! Or is it awkward for you to see yourself married to Christ? It’s not a manly picture! Or is it because you are not presently experiencing an intimate and personal relationship with your spouse. So it makes it hard to believe that God would love you without conditions and accepts you just as you are. Or do you fear what would happen if you got close to God in this way? You might have to give up control and your devotion to other things.

My next Blog we will consider:
Even in God’s stubborn love for us in our marriage with Christ, we still struggle with other loves in our lives. What are those other loves?

Warmly,

Pastor Jeff

I've Moved!

My personal blog For the Healing of the Nations moved. You can find it here. In addition to the posts at this blog you can join me there for more conversation!

Pastor Irwyn

Dysfunction & God's Plan

It seems that we very readily label individuals or families as dysfunctional. By that label we mean to imply that the individual or family does not exhibit “normal” or “appropriate” behavior in one or many aspects of life. At the same time, since dysfunction is so prevalent maybe it should be labeled “normal”. I say that a bit tongue and cheek, but what is normal in this broken world is the sin at the root of our dysfunction. 

One of the things that you have to love about the Bible is the fact that God doesn’t hide the dysfunction in the lives of the people who we find there. For example, Genesis 27 reads like a soap opera. Intrigue, deception, and lying are the prominent features. Isaac, Esau, Rebekah, and Jacob are all scheming around one thing, God’s blessing. 

One commentator writes about Genesis 27 in this way:

From beginning to end, the concern for the blessing predominates. Isaac sought to bestow it, and Esau wanted it. Rebekah heard about it and ensured that Jacob got it. Isaac unwittingly gave it to Jacob, and Esau was furious over having lost it. 

If you haven’t read the chapter in a while, I commend it to you. We ought not be surprised that we find people scheming and manipulating others when we read the Bible. They’re just like we are! What is meant to shock us, however, is the fact that God worked out his plan of redemption through folk like that. His plan wasn’t somehow thwarted by messed up folks, as if we were able to trip God up. 

This fact meets us right where we are. For we are all dysfunctional. What do we do with the dysfunction around us and in us? How do we avoid just becoming cynical about everything, and throwing up our hands? Ultimately folks, in everything we rest in the sovereignty and goodness of God through Jesus Christ. He’s the one who is making all things new in spite of what it looks like all around us. His plan wasn’t thwarted in Genesis 27 and it won’t be thwarted now.

In Christ’s love,

Pastor Irwyn

The Unchristian of Christianity: How we must put Christ back into Christianity

As I was exercising today, a segment on the Today show caught my attention. Matt Lauer interviewed a man who was dressed in a racecar type suit with various religious and nonreligious bummer stickers all over it. This man felt compelled to go out and talk with a diverse spectrum of people about faith specifically about the Christian faith. He interviewed both Christians and those who do not consider themselves Christians. He found that the Christian message of loving one another was lost. Many felt that most Christians do not love others well.

I am also reading a book called Unchristian. David Kinnaman, the author, found that young people from 16 to 29 years old believed the following about present day Christianity: Christians are “antihomosexual, judgmental, and hypocritical. These big three are followed by the following negative perceptions, embraced by a majority of young adults: old-fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing.” He further describes the crisis of Christianity in this way: “Only a small percentage of outsiders strongly believe that the labels ‘respect, love, hope and trust’ describe Christianity. A minority of outsiders perceives Christianity as genuine and real, as something that makes sense, and as relevant to their life.”

Honestly, the last two sentences hits me hard but I must confess I can appreciate and respect their critique. We have not loved well! What do you think about how young people view Christianity? Do the negative images that people have of Christians get your blood pumping? How do you respond to this statement: “Modern-day Christianity no longer seems Christian.” How can we listen and hear their critiques and still move towards them in the truth and love of the gospel? How can we put Christ back into Christianity?

Warmly,

Pastor Jeff

Questions 'Bout Christianity

I've shared with some of you recently that we're on a two month quest to field questions, issues, criticisms, and concerns about Christianity and Christians. We want to hear from non-Christians (whether in other religions, skeptics, atheists, etc.) and Christians (from whatever denomination) alike. 

April & May are the "fielding" months. In June we'll select the most common (or top) six to eight issues and reflect on them. Then our sermon series in July and August will be dedicated to seeing how the Bible responds to each. Hopefully, that will serve as the beginning of a longer dialogue. 

You may respond to this blog or send your responses to info@cityofhopechurch.net.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Pastor Irwyn

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race

The NY Times has an informing and insightful article regarding people of mixed races. As you know, we are a church who desires to seek gospel reconciliation. I feel that we need to have honest discussions on race and how the gospel offers us the mandate and power to pursue reconciliation. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Additionally, there is a video that accompanies this article. Worth the watch!


Warmly,

Pastor Jeff

Peace

Peace is like a colorful rainbow.

Peace looks like a white dove.

It sounds like the peaceful wind, and

It can be a soaring eagle, but

Peace is always Heavenly.

By Samuel Rickett


I thought that I share this beautiful poem from my son. Peace is Heavenly for it is from God through the person and work of Jesus Christ. For those who put their trust in Jesus we are no longer at war with God and His enemies but are at peace and His friends. Awesome News!