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My name is Wei-Han Kuan. I’m a member of St Alfred’s, and a family friend of the Russes. It’s a great joy and privilege to be asked by our lovely couple to open up God’s Word to us today.
I preach at weddings from time to time, and on one memorable
occasion here I was asked to preach from the whole Book of Ruth! Well today, we have three readings selected
by Shane and Hannah.
1. An account of creation from the start of the Bible.
2. The pastor Paul’s letter to a New Testament church.
3. And the Apostle John’s vision of the future, from the end
of the Bible.
I saw these readings about two weeks ago, and thought, this
is really a coded message from Shane and Hannah saying something like
this:
‘Wei-Han, we’ve got the beginning of the Bible, the end of
the Bible, and a Christ-centred piece expressing the centre of the Bible. So what we’d really like you to do at our wedding is preach from the whole
Bible.’ I’m not sure how long we have
this afternoon…
Three readings. Three
headings. Here they are:
First – Marriage Matters.
Second – Christ Matters.
Third – Heaven Matters.
We’ll spend most of our time on the first heading, and least
on the last.
First then, Marriage Matters.
Genesis 2.
Marriage matters,
according to the Bible, because we are created for relationship.
The first sentence or verse, verse 18:
The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be
alone’. Loneliness is not good.
In Genesis chapter one, God has been busy creating
everything, and everything is created good.
But here something is not quite right yet.
And God does something about it: he says, I will make a
helper suitable for him.
Immediately, something in our minds thinks ‘helper’ equals
subordinate, inferior, weaker. Please
disabuse yourself of that notion immediately.
For the Hebrew word, ezer – that’s the language the OT was originally
written in – that word is used 114 times in the OT, and everywhere outside this
chapter refers to some sort of military or mighty powerful help. In fact, in
more than half of those occurrences, ezer
is used to refer to God as our helper.
For example in Psalm 118, ‘The
LORD is with me; he is my helper’.
No, the helper or ezer
envisaged for Adam in creation isn’t subordinate and weak, but powerful and
godly. Someone whose strength and
ability will be, v20, the word there is ‘suitable’.
Again we lose something in translation; for the particular
phrase there is kinegedo ‘a helper in
front of, or opposite to, him’. Adam
needs a helper in front of, opposite to him.
The idea is that he needs someone who is complementary to him, not
identical to him. Please notice: suitability
here, means complementarity. Not someone
just like him, but someone who will best complement all that he is.
They are equals, but not identical. How can we tell? Because the Lord God creates the woman from
the man’s rib, from his side, to stand beside him. The Bible commentator Matthew Henry’s
expresses it well, albeit with a bit of poetic licence:
Not made out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to
be trampled by him, but out of his side to be equal with him … near his heart to be beloved.
Astute Bible readers will remember that we’ve already read
in Genesis chapter one that God created human beings in the image of God, male
and female he created them. That is,
both created in the image of God: one male, and one female.
God brings her to him, v22, and he is evidently pleased, for
he gushes out the first ever marriage vows in all of human history:
This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.
Doesn’t really sound all that romantic, does it?
I don’t know how many of you know
the story of how Shane and Hannah met, but it was at St Mark’s residential
college at Adelaide Uni. They’d been
assigned rooms next to each other. And
during O-week Shane saw Hannah playing the guitar, and I quote Shane, “I was
smitten… and then she didn’t talk to me for 6 months”.
Or about the time slightly later
when Shane and another St Mark’s mate heard the sound of someone singing and
playing the guitar. It was so sublime
and beautiful, they tracked the sound down, and coming around a corner they saw
it was Hannah, and Shane mate blurted out, “Woah… will you marry me?”
Hear again these words, from humankind’s prototypical
marriage: The words the man blurts out when he sees for the first time, his
bride for life:
This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.
He’s saying, ‘Here is the one who is so much a part of me,
it is as if she is my flesh and bones. I
feel such a bond with her, it is as if we are knit together in the same body,
so close to my heart and soul is she.’
It is an incredible, passionate declaration of the tie that
now binds the man and woman!
She shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of
man.
The word play in English mirrors the word play in Hebrew.
She shall be called ishah
for she was taken out of ish.
Again – the point isn’t that she is subordinate – but that
she is the equal and essential complementary part of a wonderful unity.
Verse 24 makes that clear.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
It is the wonderful uniting
and oneness that is in view.
Marriage matters –
because the Lord God created us for relationship. Male and female, created for marriage.
Notice, good marriage
is the pinnacle of God’s good creation.
That’s why weddings are such wonderful celebrations, aren’t
they? Because there is something in
almost every wedding that is bursting with joy at the anticipation of the
wonderful creative partnership that is coming together, and being sealed with
promises of faithfulness and love. A
partnership from which children may be born and new life enter into the
world.
But here’s a note of warning. Genesis 3, the next chapter, will describe
humankind’s fall from grace, and the entry of sin and disappointment and death
into the world. With that in mind,
imagine this scenario:
Imagine you’re a single. Imagine that you could pick for yourself your
100 most likely marriage partners. The
100 most sensibly desirable persons for you.
And then imagine you could make them apply in writing, with
references.
Maybe you make them interview with
your close friends and family. You
short-list the top 10. Then you date
each of them a couple of times. Then you
further short-list to the top 3; you meet their families; you date them for
three or four months each; and at the end of that year you pick the winner and
go through rigorous marriage preparation and have a dream wedding.
What do you end up with?
The Bible says, that even after
all that, you still end up
with one sinner, marrying another
sinner.
Here’s a piece of news for
you. My wife Valerie thought I was
perfect when we got married. That lasted
about six hours.
Shane – you know that today you’re
marrying Hannah:
a sinful person in need of the
grace of God in Christ.
Hannah – you know that today
you’re marrying Shane:
a sinful person in need of the grace
of God in Christ.
Shane and Hannah, you
know today that
Marriage matters, but
Christ matters more.
That’s the point of
our second reading. Christ matters
more.
That is why, of all the world’s major monotheistic
religions, only Christianity affirms singleness. Think about it: Jesus Christ was single – and
perfectly fulfilled.
For Christians who do get married, like Shane and Hannah today,
we realise that we’re entering into marriage on this side of the Fall. We’re each imperfect, each deeply flawed, inclined to be selfish and
self-centred; despite our best intentions.
The Bible calls that sin, and its described as a deep infection that has
only one cure.
That cure of course, is Christ Jesus himself.
It’s easy on a cursory reading of Colossians 3, to think
that Christianity is all about what I’d call moralistic do-good-ism. Look at it please. First paragraph: you’re a Christian now.
Second paragraph: don’t do bad stuff.
Third paragraph: do good stuff.
But such a reading misses the Good News that lies at the
heart of the Christian faith. All
cultures make up their rules for good and evil; justice and fairness. But rules, according to the Bible, are
helpless to save.
Anyone can make up great promises for a wedding service; but
conflict and challenges will come and keeping those promises for a lifetime is
quite another matter.
But even if a couple can keep a marriage together. Even if the commitment lasts and a couple
stays happily married for seventy or eighty years, one day, one of you will
die, and then what? What do you do with
the tragic sense of grief and loss then?
And then, commonly, the other spouse dies soon after. And the rest of us ask, what was that all it
was about? A happy life of eighty or
ninety years.. and then what?
Marriage matters. It’s a great gift of God. Marriage and earthly joy and happiness matter. But Christ matters more.
Let’s read Colossians 3 carefully. The apostle Paul is writing to the Christians
in the city of Colossae. How do we know
they are Christians? Well we are told explicitly
in Chapter One. But even here in Chapter
Three, we read, they have been – first sentence – ‘raised with Christ’.
Or v3 – their lives are ‘now hidden with Christ in
God’.
Or v4 – ‘When Christ, who is your life...’ Christ is their life! What an incredible thing to say. Here in Melbourne we’re more likely to say X
footy team is his life. Or fishing is
his life. Or adventure sports is his
life. But here, Christ is their
life. They are Christian believers –
avid and committed disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Please notice: being a Christian isn’t a matter of having
followed a bunch of rules. The rules are
in the next paragraph – we’ll get to them in time.
Being a Christian is not about following rules.
Being a Christian is about a deep relationship with Jesus
Christ.
That’s what the language of being ‘raised with Christ’,
‘hidden with Christ in God’ and having ‘Christ as your life’ is indicative
of.
In particular, being a Christian is about relying on Jesus
Christ for forgiveness. We see this at
the end of verse 13: Forgive as the Lord forgave (past tense) you.
Christians, like Shane and Hannah, and like so many of us
here today, recognise that at the heart of the human condition is what our
second paragraph, v5, calls our ‘earthly nature’… and we see the list of things
that make it up through the paragraph:
sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, idolatry,
anger, rage, male slander, filthy language… lying… and from v11, racism, and
all forms of class-ism. In the Bible, this isn’t an exclusive list;
there’s plenty more of this stuff in every human being.
Christians recognise that for all of this, we need
forgiveness. And the message of the
Bible is that
God comes to earth in human form at Christmas; and that baby
grows up into the God-man Jesus Christ, who dies on the Cross at Easter, paying
the price for all that brokenness and wrongness; purchasing forgiveness from
God for us.
Not only for us – and here’s why the Christian message is
called Good News:
That forgiveness full and free is available for all who would believe on Christ.
For all who would
believe that the baby in the manger at Christmas is real,
the man on the Cross at Easter is real, and died for them.
That’s what it means for Shane, for Hannah, for me, and for
many of us here today, that we declare the Lord Jesus as our Saviour.
Please listen carefully: Shane and Hannah wanted me to say this
today: that if you’re here, and you haven’t said yes to Jesus in your life,
then their wedding day would be a great day to say yes to Jesus on. It’s pretty simple, just say yes to the baby
we sing about in so many Christmas carols.
And just say yes to the man who died on the Cross at Easter so that you
might live. And then tell someone about
it please – so they can encourage you and help you along the way. You can tell me.
If you’d like to find out more, then Shane and Hannah would
love to help you – after their
honeymoon. You’ve got a standing
invitation to dinner and meaningful conversation at their place. There’s a clipboard out back where you can
sign up for advance bookings… just kidding.
But wait, some of you Christians say; we also declare Jesus
to be Lord.
That’s true.
Shane was telling me that a key moment in his walk with God
came when he heard a sermon challenging him to be a person of the Kingdom of
God, rather than a person of the world.
That’s when he decided that Jesus had to be Lord of his life, and that
following Jesus meant… following Jesus, heart, soul, mind and strength! Not just paying lip-service in church a couple
of times a year, or nodding knowingly at sermons.
That’s the connection to the rest of the passage from
Colossians. For true Christian faith is
transformative. It does not leave us
where we began. It puts us on a path of
increasing maturity and godliness, wisdom and love. All this, not of our own ability or strength,
but with the power that God promises to supply to those who call on him through
Christ. What a wonderful promise of
God! You can access it today!
Shane and Hannah – will you access that promise today? Will you determine this day to stay on that
path of increasing maturity in Christ?
Here’s a prayer you can pray right now, and each day from now on: Lord,
please help me to be the husband or wife you want me to be.
Marriage matters, but
Christ matters more.
Now finally and
briefly, Heaven matters.
The Bible teaches us that earthly marriage is a wonderful
foretaste of a heavenly wedding and marriage to come. And our last reading provides us with a
vision of the heavenly future – beyond death – when all the redeemed in Christ
will gather at the wedding supper of the Lamb.
The Lord Jesus, the lamb of God slain for the sins of the world.
All other things being equal, we will each grow old, get
physically weaker, and die. As a parent
of three young children, I’m already thinking about the reversal that is to
come; when one day I will be as weak and helpless as my children were in their
earliest days.
We talk about these things quite
openly in our family, and my four and a half year old, Samuel, piped up the
other week and said in complete seriousness, ‘Dad. Don’t worry.
When you grow old. I’ll change
your nappies.’
God through his Word teaches us not to worship this life –
and especially not to worship all that is so good and enjoyable in it. In fact, our particular temptation is to
worship the good gifts of God, instead of God himself. Even Christian marriage is not to be
worshipped. We will each grow old. Disease and death will grieve us terribly in
time to come.
Shane and Hannah, you know the love of God in Christ, that
transcends this mortal coil. Our prayer
for you, at the beginning of this part of your journey, is that this wedding
today, and your marriage hereafter, might be a wonderful foretaste of the
heavenly wedding and marriage to come – between Christ and his church; between
God and his people.
When you think back on this day, do remember:
Marriage matters – Genesis – God made it good.
Christ matters more – Colossians – set your hearts on things above.
Heaven matters – Revelation – Blessed are those who are invited to
the wedding supper of the Lamb.
Amen.
