God’s Good Design for Marriage and Singleness – Part 1

Well, if you have a Bible, and I hope you or somebody around you does that you can look on with. Let me invite you to open with me to Genesis 2. As you’re turning, I want to welcome our church family all across Metro D.C. and Arlington and Montgomery and Loudon and Prince William, as well as others online who are physically unable to be with us today. And for those of you who are visiting with us in any one of these places, we are sincerely honored you’re here. We want you to know that you are always welcome here.

Bear with my voice today as, one, I’m a bit under the weather, and two, I was coaching a JV girls basketball tournament yesterday all day, and you can’t pull out a championship without really giving your all—which I did with my voice, and we did win it. But anyway … we would have praised God with losing, too. But it’s more fun to praise God with winning. 

So, we’re now in the last two weeks of this series on God’s good design from the first two chapters of the Bible. We’ve looked at God’s good design for creation, humanity, sexuality, rest, work. And today and, Lord willing, next week, we’re going to look at the final verses in Genesis 2 to see God’s good design for marriage and singleness.

Why Everyone Needs This Message

And if I could just point out the obvious, every person in this gathering is in one of those two groups. You’re either married or you’re single. We’re going to look at what the Bible says about both groups. Marriage this week and singleness next week, both based on foundations here in Genesis 1–2. But here’s the deal: Regardless of which group you’re in, you need both of these weeks for multiple reasons. I’ll mention three.

One is because at any point in the future you could switch groups. Some of you who are single may get married, and those of you who are married have spouses who are not guaranteed to be there tomorrow. Not one of us is guaranteed breath tomorrow. So we all need to know what the Bible says about both marriage and singleness.

Then, second, regardless of which group you’re in, you know people in the other group, and you want to be able to love them well and encourage them in their relationship with Jesus, whether they’re single or married. For example: Teenagers, most of you are single. But it’s good for you to know how to pray for and encourage married couples, including many of your parents, so that they experience God’s good design in their marriage in a way that’s actually good for you … and that might prepare you for future marriage.

Also, for example, married couples, we do not love our single brothers and sisters well by isolating them or leaving them to figure out singleness on their own. We need both of these weeks to be the body of Christ to each other.

And then, third, we all live in a culture marked by confusion and deception around both marriage and singleness. And we all need to know and promote and pray and work for God’s good design in marriage and singleness in the world. So whether you’re married or single, let’s listen to what God says about marriage this week and singleness next week from the very beginning of creation. In fact, will you pause for just a moment and just pray in your heart right where you’re sitting. Ask God to teach you in a fresh way about marriage today. Whether you’re single or married, just take a moment to do that now.

God, we praise you as the author of marriage. And we pray for your help, especially in our culture today, to understand your good design for marriage.

We pray that we would understand your good design for marriage more over the next few minutes than we do right now. And we pray that you would transform marriages and future marriages all across this gathering right now, knowing that there’s so many different circumstances, even struggles, when it comes to the past or the present, when it comes to marriage. We pray that you’d take your Word and speak to each of our hearts, however we need to hear from you, by your Holy Spirit. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

All right, with hearts ready to learn from God, let’s listen to his words starting in Genesis 2:18.

“Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:18–25).

There’s so much here. So, I want to show you four truths about God’s design for marriage here, and then springing from here, all over Scripture.

1. God Designs Marriage for Our Good

Number one, God designs marriage for our good—for the good of humanity. Genesis 2:18 jumps off the page in the Bible because over and over again, to this point in Genesis 1–2, we’ve read, “God saw that what he had made was good.” The light was good. The land and the waters were good. Vegetation, plants, and trees were good. The sun and the moon were good. Sea creatures and birds were good. Humanity was good. It was all good … until it was not good. And it’s interesting, “not good” is actually the first word that God says here in the Hebrew. It’s literally, “The Lord God said ‘not good.’” And keep in mind, this is before sin even entered the world. So what was not good, and God tells us man was alone.

Now as a quick reminder, at the end of Genesis 1–2 (or end of Genesis 1) we saw [that] God created man and woman. What we have here in Genesis 2 is a longer-form story of how that happened. So God created man first, but it was not good because man needed a helper. Which, a couple of things here.

First, Genesis 2:18 is making clear to us that none of us is intended to live in isolation. We are literally created for community with other human beings. We’re made for each other, and we can’t experience God’s good design for our lives alone. Now, we’re going to see that doesn’t mean we all have to be married, but it does mean we all need each other, which leads to this word “helper.” And immediately people start thinking, “What man needed a servant who was inferior to him? The Bible is so misogynistic.”

But hold on, and let’s look at this word because it’s a beautiful word in the Bible. It’s used over 90 times in the Old Testament, and not one time does it refer to what servants or subordinates would do for someone over them. Instead, it describes soldiers who come alongside an army to help them, or it describes God himself as he comes alongside his people to help them. I’ll show you just a couple of examples. 

Exodus 18:4, Moses names his son “Eleazar,” for he said, “The God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.” That’s the same word from Genesis 2:18. Psalm 10:14—which is in our church’s Bible reading today; which we’ve studied before—is the basis for all the work we’re doing in foster care and adoption, says, [To God], “But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless.” Same word. Psalm 121:1–2: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” One more—Isaiah 41:13: “For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.’” This word describes God himself, which means there’s no hint of inferiority here. If anything, that would be a hint of superiority. But we know that’s not true. 

Let me give you three descriptors of how God designed this relationship between man and woman in marriage for good from the very beginning.

Equal Dignity

So, first, God designed marriage to be a relationship marked by equal dignity. Both man and woman made in the image of God with equal, glorious dignity, with no hint of superiority or inferiority. As one biblical scholar wrote, “Man’s helper would be no weak sister by any stretch of a misogynist’s imagination.” Genesis 1:2 is a declaration to any culture anywhere in the world that a woman or man should never be treated with inferior dignity. Period.

I shared a couple of weeks ago about how work we’re doing through giving in our church family for the spread of the gospel in Afghanistan is seeing women who are often treated as second class coming to Christ and realizing for the first time the equal worth they have before God himself.

Beneficial Complementarity

So the picture here is equal dignity and beneficial complementarity. Now those are big words, but they really capture what’s happening here. When the Bible says that woman was a “helper” fit for him, the language is basically, “Like him yet a complement to him” … and the context fills out what this means as God parades all these beasts and birds in front of Adam for him to name. And as each one passed by him, Adam was saying, “Not like me. Not like me. Not like me.” A clear picture, by the way, that humanity is not a progressed animal but a distinct creation in God’s image. And at the end of this parade, we read these words again in verse 20: “But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.” The language is literally “a counterpart to him that is good for him.”

So God causes man to take a nice, long nap. And when he wakes up, let’s just say he’s surprised. Then the man said this, “At last.” I love this. Literally, the first word of this sentence in the original language is “at last.” And keep in mind that up until this point in the Bible, we’ve not heard a word from a human. So, do you know what man’s first words recorded in the Bible were? “At last.” That’s Hebrew for “boom!” It’s about time. At last, somebody like me: bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called wo-man. The Hebrew word here is a lot like the English. It sounds like the Hebrew word for man and just adds to it as the man, Adam, sees the woman, Eve, who is like him in so many ways … and not like him in some other ways—that have him singing poetry. And Mike talked about that in depth a few weeks ago in a sermon that brought about a lot of conversations with our kids in our household. So, we’re not going back there today.

Total Intimacy

But it all sets the stage for this third descriptor of the goodness of God’s design in marriage. It’s marked by total intimacy. So this is when we get God’s definition for marriage: Therefore, God says, marriage is when a man leaves his father and his mother and holds fast to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Do you see the total intimacy there? A break in all previous family ties. A new and total loyalty, no longer to dad or mom, but to your spouse. Total priority that supersedes other family ties as a husband and a wife. Hold fast. They cling to one another as they become one flesh—physical intimacy, relational intimacy, emotional intimacy, mental intimacy, spiritual intimacy that God has designed for one man to experience with one woman in a heterosexual, monogous, covenant commitment of marriage.

And I put it very directly like that, knowing that in our day that sounds ancient. And I want to say it is absolutely ancient. So ancient that it’s been around since the beginning of time. So ancient that it’s been the norm for millennia, which I hope puts in perspective the audacity of the Supreme Court in our country to come along in 2015 and declare that we have now discovered a better definition of marriage than God established millennia ago. It is the essence of sinful humanity to decide that we know better than our Creator what is good for us.

But mark it down: Regardless of the opinions or of politicians in any time and place, or Supreme Court justices of any country, the Supreme Judge of all creation has defined marriage, and designed it for our good as a man and a woman; both beautifully and wonderfully, masterfully molded in the image of their Maker, coming together in equal dignity, beneficial complementarity, and total intimacy—for our good.

Now, as soon as I say that, I also want to say that if you are hearing this and maybe you’ve united your life with someone under a different definition of marriage, I sincerely do not want you to feel isolated at this point, because it’s not just those who go outside of God’s design for marriage; it’s not just the Supreme Court of our country. The reality is every single person in this gathering, including me, is guilty of deciding we know better than God what is

good for our lives. We’ve all turned aside from the goodness of God. And that’s actually why God designed marriage the way he did.

2. God Designs Marriage for the Display of the Gospel

Follow this. This is the second truth about marriage: God designs marriage for the display of the gospel. So, one of my favorite truths throughout this whole series—Mike has said it over and over again—is that God’s design reveals God’s intent. So, why did God set up marriage this way? Think about it: God didn’t have to design humanity to be male and female. He could have just made all one gender. He didn’t have to design marriage to be the uniting of one male and one female in a covenant together.

So why did he do this? And the answer is breathtaking. Because God was painting a portrait. This is so important to see. Most people view marriage merely as a means to self-fulfillment or self-satisfaction. Your aim is to find a mate who completes you, whoever that is, from whatever gender that is, however many people that is. And in this view, marriage is an end in and of itself. But that’s not actually God’s design, God’s intent for marriage.

The Bible teaches that God designed, intended marriage not as an end, but as a means to an end, to a greater end. Let me show you this in Genesis 2 in a way that’s quoted later in the Bible when Ephesians 5 talks about marriage. And this is so amazing. We definitely didn’t plan it this way, but Ephesians 5 also just so happens to be our church’s Bible-reading plan today. God is speaking crystal clear to us. And in Ephesians 5:31, we have a quotation from Genesis 2—“Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. The two shall become one flesh.”

That’s what we just read in Genesis 2:24. And then God says in his word, “This mystery [of marriage] is profound, and I’m saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” What? Do you see this? The Bible is saying that in Genesis 2, God was painting a portrait of Christ and the church, which changes everything about how we’re reading Genesis 2—to realize that God’s design, intent, for marriage from the very beginning of human history was to paint a portrait of Jesus and the church on the canvas of human history. You say, “What do you mean?”

Well, in this same passage, Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” So, a husband’s love for his wife is designed by God to be a picture, a representation, of Christ Jesus’s love for the church. And Ephesians 5:24, right before this, says, “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” So a wife’s relationship with her husband is designed (intended) by God to represent (show) the world a picture of the church’s love for Christ.

So follow this, because now we’re really going super counter-cultural in ways that lead to all kinds of objection and misinterpretation and misapplication. So follow what God is saying here: A husband is designed by God to show the world a picture of Jesus by selflessly loving and sacrificially laying down his life daily for his wife. That’s God’s design for husbands: to show the world what the love of Jesus looks like in action. Earlier in Ephesians 5, we read that husbands are described as the head of their wives, which causes some husbands to think, “I’m in control.” But that’s not what headship means. Husbands, headship is not an opportunity for us to control our wives. Headship is a responsibility for us to die for our wives … every day. That’s it’s what he did. So that’s what we do. We give ourselves up for their good. 

Husbands, you and I are called to reflect Jesus to our brides as Jesus gave his life for his bride, the church. That means husbands were designed by God to love our wives selflessly, putting their needs above our own—to love her carefully, to learn daily how you can best help her flourish in all the ways God has made her to flourish in his good design for her; to love her spiritually, to shepherd her, to become more like Jesus as a result of the way we love her; to love her gently, to nourish and cherish her, to never ever, ever be harsh with her; to never ever, ever debase her or domineer over her; but to daily outserve her. This is what Jesus does for his church. And God has designed a husband to show the world how great the love of Jesus is in action.

And then, so now it makes sense that a wife is designed by God to show the world a picture of the church by respecting her husband and following his selfless leadership. Of course, Ephesians 5:33 makes total sense when you realize God’s good design for marriage. “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself—what we just talked about—and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” What wife doesn’t want to respect and follow a husband who is laying down his life to love and serve her selflessly? And as she does this, a wife shows the world that the church doesn’t follow Jesus because we have to. We follow Jesus because we want to, because his love is so good. And when this is happening between a husband and a wife according to God’s good design, the world will see a picture of the gospel, the good news of God.

So for those who are visiting with us: The gospel is the greatest news in the world—that every one of us has been created to experience eternal life in a love relationship with God himself. The problem is all of us have turned against God, have said we know better than God what is good for our lives. And as a result of our sin, we’re separated from God. And if we die in this state of separation from God, we’ll experience his holy judgment forever. But the good news is, God loves us. And God’s not left us alone in our sin. God has come to us in the person of Jesus, who came to live a perfect life of no sin and then to lay down his life to die on a cross to pay the price for our sin. And then three days later to rise from the grave in victory over sin and death … so that anyone, anywhere, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, if you will turn from your sin and yourself and put your trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, God will forgive you of all your sins and restore you to relationship with him forever—as a husband and a bride in covenant commitment with each other.

God is calling people from all nations, including you today, to turn from your sin and yourself and to trust in Jesus as your Savior and Lord; to trust in his love for you today. And it’s this good news—that’s the gospel—it’s this portrait of his love for the world that God has designed marriage to be a painting of. Which then leads to, okay, the third truth about marriage.

3. God Designs Marriage to Depend on His Grace

God designs marriage to depend on his grace. So, let’s go ahead and put it out there. No husband in this gathering is perfectly like Jesus. And no wife in this gathering is perfectly like God has designed the church to be … which means we all need his grace, his help, in marriage. You think about why so many marriages struggle. Experts point to all kinds of problems that hinder marital happiness: communication problems, compatibility problems, financial problems, sexual problems, personality problems. The list goes on and on. I would submit, and I really don’t intend to be overly simplistic here, but I believe the major problem in every marriage according to the Bible is clear. The major problem in every marriage is sin.

It’s so interesting … the last verse in Genesis 2 talks about how this first husband and wife … look at the language … they were naked and were not ashamed. They had no shame. But then in Genesis chapter 3, they sin. And the first thing we read after that is verse 7: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” Genesis 3:7). And it looks like that’s the same word that we saw at the end of Genesis 2, but it’s actually a different word here in Genesis 3 that’s used in other places in the Old Testament to describe God’s people and their guilt for sin. Places like we don’t have time to turn to these, but Deuteronomy 28:48, Ezekiel 16:39, and Ezekiel 23:29. 

So chapter 2 is basically giving us a picture of innocent nakedness, with no shame, that God has designed for marriage. Yet as soon as sin enters the picture in Genesis 3, there’s a guilt and a shame that mark Adam and Eve’s relationship with each other and with God. And that is the reality that every marriage in the world lives in. It’s the uniting of two sinners—two people who have turned against the goodness of God and who are prone to walk away from him. And that sounds obvious, but I think it’s overlooked. I mean, how many wives lean over to their husbands on their honeymoon and whisper softly in their ears, “I am a massive sinner, and I am yours for life.” Like, that does not get the romance going, but it’s true.

I hate to break it to us, but according to Scripture, marriage is bringing together two people—we read about this the other day in our Bible reading in Romans 3—two people who Romans 3 says “their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit, the poison of vipers is on their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” Those lyrics do not make for a good wedding song. Let’s pause while we reflect on the depravity of this man and this woman. But here’s why this is so important. Yes, for sure, even when sin’s not in the picture, we still have challenges in communication or understanding or other areas of marriage. But at the core, the major problem in every marriage is sin in a husband and sin in a wife. It’s a spiritual battle that’s being waged in every husband and wife’s heart.

Ephesians 6 … also in our Bible reading today … there is an adversary who wants to destroy your intimacy with God and your intimacy with your spouse. Which means that if the major problem in every marriage is sin, then the major solution for every any marriage is what? A Savior. We all desperately need Jesus to save us from our sin and ourselves. Starting with what he did on the cross as he hung, think about it, naked and ashamed. A powerful picture of him taking our guilt and our shame upon himself in our place. And when each one of us trusts in him to cover over our sin, to reconcile us to intimacy with God, then the way is open for us to be reconciled to intimacy with our husband or our wife. And we don’t just need Jesus to save us through what he did on the cross 2,000 years ago; we need Jesus to save us on a daily basis from our sin and from ourselves by his Spirit in us. God designs marriage to daily depend on his grace, and the good news is, he promises to give it every day.

Husbands, if you have Christ in you, then you have everything you need in you to love your wife well if you will look to him and abide in him and depend on his grace every day. And wives, if you have Christ in you, then you have everything you need to love and honor your husband well as you look to Jesus and abide in Jesus and depend on God’s grace every day. And as soon as I say that, I know there are some marriages represented in this gathering right now that honestly feel dark and difficult, broken and lost. But I want to encourage you with the message of the entire book of Ephesians. The whole book that we read these verses in chapter 5 from is about bringing Jews and Gentiles together who were enemies, who hated each other, and God brought them together in Christ. God’s grace and the power of God’s gospel are sufficient to make marriage work when both a husband and a wife look to and abide in Jesus.

There are literally hundreds of marriages across this church family that have been helped when husbands and wives come together and fix their eyes on Jesus with each other. I know there are so many different situations. I don’t have time to address everyone, but I just want to encourage every husband or wife in any marriage where there are any alarms going off, or even if there are not, to seek help in the body of Christ with hope in the power of Christ. You’re not designed even to do marriage alone. You need the body of Christ alongside you, pointing you to the grace of God that is there for you. Which leads to this last truth about marriage.

4. God Designs Marriage for the Spread of His Glory

Number four, God designs marriage for the spread of his glory. And this is the ultimate end of marriage, the ultimate intent for which God has designed marriage —for the spread of his glory. Which means … so follow this … the ultimate starting point of marriage is not what is best for me, which is what the world would say is the ultimate starting point—not just for marriage, but for life. It’s the driving motivation for all kinds of decisions in life, and decisions about whether to marry or who to marry. But what if that is the completely wrong question—What’s best for me? What if the starting point instead is what is best for God? What will bring the most glory to God? And that is a fundamentally different starting point than every other perspective on marriage. And we desperately need that starting point. 

Until you realize that marriage is more about God than it is about you or this other person, then you’re not even at the right starting point. Everything in creation, including marriage here at this pinnacle point in creation in Genesis 2, revolves around God and all of his glory. Which means that the key to experiencing God’s good design for creation and sexuality and work and rest and life and marriage in this world is realizing that everything revolves around God, not you.

And then, so don’t miss this, you put this together with the first truth we looked at … you realize what’s most glorifying to God is actually most good for us. This is the way our lives are designed: to find our greatest good and bringing God greatest glory. And this is the way marriage is designed—to find the greatest good in marriage by bringing God greatest glory in marriage … which all then means that the most significant question in any marriage is this for any husband or any wife … the most significant question is, “Is Jesus the Lord of your life?”

That question, more than any other question, is the most significant question in your marriage. Is Jesus Lord over you? Is your life submissive to his Word such that you’ll do whatever he says? Is your life submissive to whatever he says is best for you? However you can bring him most glory. Because I really don’t expect you to agree with what we’ve seen in God’s Word today about marriage unless you’re trusting in Jesus as Lord.

Some will walk away from here today saying, “I don’t embrace what the Bible says about marriage, headship, leadership, submitting, following.” And the reason will be because you trust yourself more than you trust your Creator as Lord of your life. The reason will be because you are choosing to be discipled by this world instead of being discipled by God’s Word. And I want to urge you not to do that. I want to urge you to take the God who made you and who loves you at his Word … to believe his Word that has stood for thousands of years still stands today, and will stand forever. Believe that God has designed marriage for your good. Believe that God has designed marriage, like a master painter, as a portrait of his love for the world. Believe that God has designed marriage to depend on his grace, and he promises to give that grace freely to all who ask him for it. And finally, believe that God has designed marriage to spread his glory … that this is why marriage ultimately exists.

Heather and I’s theme verse in marriage from our wedding day has been Psalm 34:3: “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” This is the mission of marriage—to magnify the Lord with your spouse, to exalt his name with each other. And this is why biblical marriage is worth defending in the face of cultural redefinition. It’s why biblical marriage is worth displaying, even when it means cultural confrontation. This is why biblical marriage is worth working for husbands and wives; worth encouraging and fighting for single brothers and sisters alongside those in this church family who are married; and maybe worth pursuing in your life because God has established marriage from the beginning of creation to show his glory to a watching world.

And obviously, we have experienced in so many different ways in this gathering the effects of sin, not just in our lives but in marriages … in ways that even diving into this brings up open up wounds from the past. But I want, even amidst those wounds, to point you to the One who is able to bring balm to those wounds like no one or nothing in this world can; to not let those wounds blind you to the beauty that God has designed for marriage, and to trust his grace to heal those wounds; and to trust his grace to help us experience his good design to the extent with which he calls us to today.

God, help us as your church to illustrate and demonstrate what this world, what our country, what our culture, desperately needs to see. As spiritual deception and darkness engulfs God’s good design for marriage around us, spiritual light will shine all the brighter in a picture of a husband who lays down his life for his wife, and a wife who joyfully follows her husband’s selfless, loving leadership. 

God’s design for marriage is far better, far more breathtaking, infinitely more satisfying than anything we can create on our own. So let’s give ourselves to God’s good design. Let’s work for healthy marriages across the church and beyond. And let’s show the glory of our God and his great love to the world around us, knowing that … I want to just show you as we close where all of history is headed … for those who trust in God’s love in Jesus. You got to see this in Revelation chapter 19.

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure’— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” (Revelation 19:6–9)

Are you seeing this? God designed marriage in Genesis 2 at the very beginning of the Bible. And at the very end of the Bible, we’re seeing heaven described as a marriage celebration. See it. Marriage designed in Genesis 2 really is not the end. It’s pointing us to a much greater end … to the day when all who trust in Jesus will be united with him as our Savior … no longer covered in the guilt and shame of our sin, but clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, made possible by Jesus who died on the cross for our sin. And then, check this out. Revelation 21:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Revelation 21:1–2)

I remember the day when I stood at the front of a church. The door in the back swings open. I see my bride step forward dressed in white. All the emotions, all the exhilaration. And this is the image God gives us of heaven coming to us. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3–4)

Talk about the wedding day of all wedding days! When we will be united with our God as the bride of Jesus for all of eternity. So in anticipation of that day, in light of God’s design from the very beginning, I want to give you a few moments to reflect on these questions just prayerfully before God today.

One, if you are married, what specific steps can you take this week to love your spouse in a way that reflects the gospel and thus leads to your good and God’s glory by God’s grace? Husband, wife, what can you … what is God calling you to do this week to love your spouse in light of his good design? And especially, especially if there are warning lights going on on the dashboard of your marriage. Husband, wife, take the steps today together to say, “Let’s let’s address these. We want to experience God’s good design in our marriage.”

And then if you’re single, what specific steps can you take this week to serve or encourage husbands and/or wives in their marriage? Just think through, How can you help promote, encourage, foster healthy marriages around you in your singleness?

And then, finally, in light of the most significant question we talked about earlier, how is God calling you specifically to surrender to him as Lord of your life today? And maybe that means in these moments coming to the point where you first trust in Jesus to save you from your sins, or you trust in his love for you. Or maybe this means a specific area of your life where you’re not trusting or following Jesus as Lord … and maybe even resisting Jesus in his Word. And this is an opportunity for you to come to him and say, “I trust [that] your ways are better than my ways, and I want to surrender to you as Lord in this specific way.”

So take a few minutes to pray through these questions where you’re sitting and then I or another leader at your location will lead you from there.

Oh God, as we meditate on this Word that we’ve heard from you, I don’t believe there’s any accident in us hearing this word from you today … in any one of us who’s here hearing this word from you today. And God, I know I know there’s so many … you know every single circumstance, every single situation represented in this gathering. And God, where where there are wounds from past hurt in marriages, we we pray, God, for your healing, for your grace to bring healing in those wounds. God, we pray where there is present struggle in marriages. God, we pray that you would instill fresh hope today and that you would draw husbands, draw wives, to yourself to say, “I want to experience your good design in my life, and my spouse’s life, our marriage.” God, I pray that people would not walk away from hearing this word and just continue in marriages that need help. God, we pray that there would be restoration and reconciliation in the days, weeks, months to come because of the seeds from your Word planted today. I pray for grace and courage for steps that need to be taken toward that end.

Please God, please, we pray, we want to experience your good design in our marriages. We pray for the most healthy of marriages represented in this room—all still plagued by sinfulness in a husband’s heart and sinfulness in a wife’s heart—God, we pray for flourishing in marriages by your grace. We pray that you’d help us as your church, for our good and for your glory in the world, to pursue and work for and fight for in our lives and our marriages, the world around us, this glorious picture you’ve designed for us in marriage. We pray that the fruit of marriages in this gathering would extend far beyond even homes right now, but for generations to come. We pray that your glory in the gospel and marriage would be clear until that day when we see your face and we unite our lives together with you, free from sin, by your grace, in eternal covenant communion with you. We look forward to that day, and we pray that you’d help us in every way we need from this day until that … in Jesus’ name. And all God’s people said, “Amen.”