Loving The Church

We apologize that only the first half of the sermon was recorded.

Ephesians 5:21-33; Revelation 19:6-9

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

November 12, 2023

One of the great privileges of being a pastor is doing weddings.  I think I get the best place in the house. I stand next to the groom who is oftentimes nervous, anxiously anticipating his bride about ready to appear. There is that time of everything the bride and groom have hoped and planned and prepared for about to take place, when she will appear and come down the aisle to him.  The music is playing.  People stand in preparation of the entrance of the bride. And then I get a clear view of the bride as she is ready to walk down the aisle to be joined to the waiting groom. There is a brief moment as she turns the corner or the doors open, where we first get a glimpse of the bride and she is radiant!  She glows with beauty and splendor. Always.

I get to see what the groom sees from his vantage point. And after I see her I look at him.  He is absolutely fixed on his bride as she comes down to him. The look on his face is priceless.  Often tears.  Always absolutely stunned with wonder.

Scripture pictures the relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and his church as that of a bride and groom. We are his bride. The church is the people of Christ and we are in a relationship with him.

By church I mean all the little Christians churches and traditions that make up the one large, universal church.  When we say the Apostle’s Creed and say that we believe in “one holy catholic church” that is what we are affirming. We are one universal church.

 In Ephesians 5 Paul compares the relationship of a husband and wife to the relationship between Christ and his church.

Most people who read Ephesians 5 focus on what Paul writes about husbands and wives.  It often stirs controversy.  For example, Paul writes that wives are to submit to their husbands.  Here we go. Right there people get a little edgy.  People hear that and get their hackles up, and get into all kinds of arguments. And some leaders have used this passage in destructive ways toward women. But that is not all Paul wrote in this passage.

Many people focus only on the husband-wife aspect when they read Ephesians 5, and there are some great things about that to be found in Ephesians 5. But this morning I want us to focus on what Paul said about the relationship between Christ and the church. While most people focus on Paul’s words about husbands and wives so little is often noted about Christ and us. In fact, at the end Pau says that really he is talking about Christ and the church.

You know our relationship with the church can sometimes be a love/hate relationship. Many of us have been in many different churches and had a variety of experiences. We are nurtured by the church, yet sometimes we are hurt by it. We are supported in the church, yet sometimes let down by it. The church is full of saints and sinners.  There are people we love and people that might frustrate us.  The church inspires us and it confuses us.

There are days I am proud to be a part of it and days I want to put a bag over my head.  Particularly these days, there are things I see in the news and hear about churches that don’t look like what I find in scripture. To use Christ’s body for political or violent purposes is not of the Lord.

The Church is capable of tremendous love and good, and at the same time can be a most disappointing people.  Why is it like that?  At times we love being a part of the body of Christ and are ready to sign up.  And then there are times people walk away from it in frustration.  Maybe we have done that.

One the one hand the church can seem so obscure, compromised and even false.  On the other hand the church can be beautiful, generous, and loving.

People jump from one church to another, trying to find the “perfect” church.  Or they split off to start another church.  They want to make one that will be better, more pure, more like Jesus wants. The only problem is those people end up taking the same defects with them into that new church because often the defects are their own.

It reminds me of the story of the guy who was found on a deserted island.  He had survived alone for many years.  When they found him there were three buildings that he had made. His rescuers asked him about the first building.  The man said, “This one is my house.” They asked him about the second building. And he said, “This is my church that I go to.” They asked him why the third building, and he said, “That’s the church I used to go to.”

Why does Paul parallel the marriage between a man and woman and Christ and his church?  Because the relationship God has designed between the church – his people – and Christ is a marriage.  And in the New Testament, the church is called “the bride of Christ.”

Read what Paul writes in Ephesians 5 that…

·       Christ is head of the church.

·       Christ is the Savior of the church.

·       Christ loved the church and gave himself up by giving his life on the cross.

·       Christ makes the church holy and without blemish.

·       Christ nourishes the church.

·       Christ tenderly cares for the church.

Does the church have faults? Yes.  Read the New Testament and there are all kinds of faults in the church right from the start. Does Christ give up on his church?  No. Christ is not the one who condemns the church.  He is not the accuser of the church.  He doesn’t tear it down, batter or abuse it, but loves the church which is his body.  Like a loving husband loves his wife.

“But”, you say, “the church has problems.”  There is sometimes division.  There are cliques.  Perhaps you’ve seen immorality, hypocrisy, or the church not living up to what it should be.

 “Surely the Lord can’t love this mess.” Christ knows what we are.  But the church belongs to and is loved by him.

Christ is our Savior and the reason we need a Savior is because we are sinful and need to be made right with God. We are blemished with grime. We need to be cleansed and saved and you and I can’t do that for ourselves.  Only Jesus Christ can. And Christ loves his church, his bride.

I have given my life to the church.  I was born and raised in the church.  I came to faith and was nurtured in the church. I live with the church, breathe the church, serve the church.  I love the church. I have also been hurt by the church.  I have wept for it.  I have experienced as much pain as anyone else here.

You want to say, “Phil, you don’t understand the hypocrites I have seen in the church, and the absolutely unchristian behavior that has frustrated me.” Oh yes I do!! You get frustrated with the church.  So do I.  You get disgusted and disgruntled and complain.  So do I.  You feel uplifted, fed, and comforted.  So do I.

But Paul writes that just as a man and woman are united and the two become one flesh, which he says is a profound mystery, so is the mystery of Christ and his church.  In some mysterious and spiritual way we are one. Our destiny is as the bride of Christ.

At the very end of the Bible we hear this:  “For the wedding of the Lamb(who is Jesus)  has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

            Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”

You see our destiny isn’t just an individual one - I die and I go to heaven.  That is the very reduced, self-centered gospel.  The Bible ends with a people being joined to God.  A people who know, love, worship and serve him.  This is how the end of the story reads at the end of Revelation: “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

The church joins in marriage to God.

Marriage has always been a common way of God speaking of the relationship between him and his people.

In Isaiah 54:5,6 the prophet Isaiah says, “For your Maker is your husband – the Lord Almighty is his name …The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife…”

In Jeremiah God chastises his people when he says, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me…You adulterous wife!  You prefer strangers to your own husband!”[1]

Listen to this from the book of Hosea: “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master’…I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.  I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.”[2]

Jesus told a parables with weddings as a setting. When John the Baptist was speaking of his role to prepare people for Christ, said, “The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice.”[3]

Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I promised you to one husband, to Christ…”[4] Do you see God’s heart and mind for this relationship?

The customs of marriage in the Jewish tradition of the first-century included the groom going to his prospective bride’s house to give a purchase price (literally the woman was “bought with a price”).  The context is very patriarchal and comes from a different culture and time but just work with me here. Technically the man and woman were legally husband and wife at that point.  She was “set apart” for him. It is the term Paul uses when he says in Ephesians 5 that Christ makes the church holy.  The root meaning of “holy” is to be set apart.  The church is set apart in a special way for Christ.

The covenant between the man and woman was confirmed with the drinking of a cup of wine, as these words were said, “This cup is a new covenant.” Ever hear that before? Then the groom would leave for about a year to prepare a room in his father’s house for his bride as the bride prepared herself for the wedding.  Then the groom and his party would come at night to surprise the bride, and she would come out with her maidens who would be carrying oil lamps.

There was a ceremony where the word “take” was used, as in the groom taking the bride from her home.  Then a great wedding feast would begin that would last for several days.

Any of this sounding familiar?  Jesus in the upper room, on the night before his death, with his disciples takes a cup of wine, tells them all to drink it and says “This cup is a new covenant” Then he told them this, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”[5]  (John 14:2,3)

That’s first-century, Jewish wedding language: drink this cup…go to prepare a place…come back and take you to be with me.

Friends, this present time is the time of courtship, promise and engagement between us and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bridegroom – Christ – is absent, in a sense, for now.  But a day is coming when he will take his bride – his church - and join the guests in a festive wedding celebration.[6] Marriage is the picture in the Bible for final union between Jesus Christ and his Church. This is the picture because better than any…”it shows the intimate and (permanent, unbreakable, eternal) indissoluble communion of Christ and us who he has purchased with his own blood.”[7]

Christ loves the church and we are to love it too. Paul says in Ephesians 5 that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her “to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”[8]

What does this mean for our living? We are to love the church.

There is beauty in the church.  It is where people worship God.  It is where people admit our sinfulness and our need for grace.  It is where grace is present.  It is where people are praying for one another and the world.

The church is the storehouse for faith, hope and love.  It is where Christ chooses to make his presence known.  And when the church is working well – and there are plenty of places it is doing just that – it impacts this world mightily. It feeds the hungry, supports the broken, shelters the vulnerable, and speaks the gospel that reconciliation has taken place between God and humanity through Jesus Christ and all are welcome to accept that gift. Small churches and big churches and every church in between, regardless of the sign on the front, are salt and light in the midst of this decaying world.

When it was built for an international exposition in the last century, the structure was called monstrous by the citizens of the city. The people demanded that it be torn down as soon as the exposition was over.  Yet from the moment its architect first conceived it, he took pride in it and loyally defended it from those who wished to destroy it.  He knew it was destined for greatness. Today it is one of the architectural wonders of the modern world and stand as the primary landmark of Paris, France. The architect was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel.  His famous tower was built in 1889.

In the same way we are struck by Jesus’ loyalty to another structure – his church  which he entrusted to an unlikely band of disciples, prayed over, died for, and calls people like us into it.

At times we don’t look like much. But Jesus, the architect of the church, knows it is destined for greatness when he returns.[9]

We can’t say we love the Lord Jesus Christ but hate his bride. A marriage needs purity, loyalty, and faithfulness.  It takes energy and commitment.  It takes time and honor.  It takes devotion and selflessness.  In a healthy marriage you have got to put the other above yourself if you are going to love them properly. Anyone who has been married – whether happily or unhappily – knows that. Every one of these things applies to our relationship to Christ.

This is where it ends: A marriage ceremony and feast and celebration. And those who will be celebrating will be those who trust in Christ and bind themselves to him and who have loved his church.

What will our groom’s face look like when we appear?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we bow before you as head of all the church.  Make your church throughout the world a people who show your love, grace, and glory.  Make our little church here a people who are a part of that.  Make us faithful in love to you always.  Amen.

[1] Jeremaih 2:2, 15, 32

[2] Hosea 2:16, 19-20

[3] John 3:29

[4] 2 Corinthians 11:2

[5] John 14:2,3

[6] Eugene Boring, Interpretation Commentary on Revelation, p.193

[7] William Barclay, Revelation, vol. 2, p.172.  My words are in parentheses.

[8] V.27

[9] John Berstecher, source unknown