Text: Ephesians 5:32 (12) "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and His church."
Here Paul is speaking of Christ and His church in a marriage setting, so marriage itself is a great mystery as well-- not because the truth of both marriage and the church are not revealed, for they clearly are, but because of the "hardness of your hearts" (Matthew 19:8).
The truth of actually living marriage out on a day-to-day basis remains a mystery due simply to the weakness of our flesh. There are days I think I have not learned a thing about marriage and yet I am in a place as a minister to offer marriage advice. I am sure all of you have marriage all figured out but I am not there yet.
The common saying in Christian circles about the Bible: "I have read the last page of the book: we win." The last few chapters of the book of Revelation really are beautiful -- full of victory, peace and joy. That really does influence our thinking when we read the rest of the books of the Bible, knowing how it ends. Why are the last couple chapters of the Bible so great?
Because at the center of it all, ruling over it all, is the ideal marriage: a perfect Husband and a perfected wife - and their ideal marriage produces blessings in great abundance for all of creation.
On a smaller scale, that was actually God's intention for marriage all along - when it operates well, it produces blessings for everyone involved.
The reason that the marriage we see at the end of the Bible between Christ and His bride is so great is due to the attitude of the husband toward the wife and the wife toward the husband!
It is this very attitude between husband and wife that is so beautifully expressed in the Song of Solomon. There, the wife's feelings toward her husband are revealed (Song of Solomon 3:1-4); and likewise, the husband's love toward his wife (Song of Solomon 4:9-10).
Such deep love is God's desire for each marriage, since each godly marriage is to reflect that ideal marriage described at the end of the book as well as in this book of Solomon - God's marriage manual.
The language of the Song of Solomon is a little strange to us in today's modern language and social media setting, but imagine the impact on modern marriages if they were as described back then!
Seeing all this, we all sure have a ways to go, don't we! But, in the spiritual sense, Revelation 19:7-8 reveals we can get there by God's grace!
And the fact of knowing how it will end is partly intended to give us hope along the way, when our own marriages fall so far short of the ideal -- and when we as husbands pale in comparison to Christ as a Husband.
Such is the reason why we husbands need to cry out to the ideal Husband for help. Christ needs to hear a husband's prayers with respect to his marriage!
But now, let us go back to the very beginning: even before God added the institution of family with a marriage and even before He created Eve to be Adam's wife.
Notice how God began - not with two people - but with a single individual -- Adam.
This is a powerful truth regarding marriage, and a powerful truth regarding the church today.
God could have created Eve separately from the dust as He did Adam. He could also have created the two of them at the same moment.
But here's the powerful truth we need to fully grasp; God wanted to show, not two separate individuals, but the formation of two out of one - and then, afterward, the two becoming one.
