Good morning. Would you bow with me for a word
of prayer? We'll ask the Lord to bless His Word to our hearts. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
what a great joy and hope it is for us to be able to sing
those words with some understanding, knowing that Your love for us
is an everlasting love. It's a perfect love. We pray
that you would be pleased now to open the windows of heaven
and to shine the light of the gospel in the person of your
dear son, in the hearts of sinners, and cause us, Lord, to be refreshed
and renewed and find our rest in the accomplished work of your
dear son. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. If you'd like to turn with me
in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians the fifth
chapter. We've spent several months now
looking at the different names and titles that the Lord has
given us of himself in his word. We know that he is past finding
out. And that he has to condescend
infinitely in order to make himself known to us. And in so many ways
he likens himself to things that we're familiar with. Particularly
in his relationship to the church. In his relationship to the church,
he refers to himself as the good shepherd and his church as the
sheep. In relationship to the church,
he refers to himself as the head of the body. He refers to himself
as the foundation stone of the building. These are things that
are common to us, and though they don't fully express his
glory, they give to us some understanding of the relationship that the
Lord Jesus Christ has with his people. He is the Savior of sinners
and in truth the only place that you will find a sinner, the only
place you will find a sinner is in the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's the only place you'll
find one. He has to make you to be a sinner. And the only
means that he uses to do that is the preaching of the gospel,
and the only place that the gospel of his free grace is preached
is in his church. So the only place you're going
to find a Savior and the only place you're going to find sinners
is in the church. He refers to himself as the master
of his servants, or the king of his willing subjects. And these are all just types
that help us to understand the relationship that we have with
the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, I want us to consider
the title or type or picture that he gives of himself to us
as the husband of his bride, or as it is expressed also in
his word, the bride's groom, the groomsman, the bridegroom
of his church. Now I fear that Most times people
will read Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25, and they'll put all their
focus on the first phrase of that verse. And in doing so,
they end up putting men under the law. They end up putting
men in a place where they've got to try to evaluate the quality
of their love towards their wife. But I draw your attention to
verse 32 in this chapter where the Lord says, this is a great
mystery and I speak concerning Christ and his church. Truth is that if the Lord is
pleased to make himself known to your heart as the husband
of his bride, or the bridegroom of his bride, then everything
will take care of itself in relationship between you and your spouse. So yes, husbands love your wives. But let's look at the rest of
this great mystery that cannot be found out but by the Spirit
of God. I speak concerning Christ and
His church as Christ loved His church and gave Himself for it. That's the relationship. that the Lord Jesus Christ has
as the husband of his bride, he gave himself wholly and willingly
in order to redeem his bride. There's nothing that he won't
do for his wife. Nothing. No man has ever treated
his wife like the Lord Jesus Christ treats his. In Isaiah
chapter 54 verse 5 we read, Thy maker is thy husband. Thy maker is thy husband. The Lord of hosts is his name. Thy Redeemer, the Holy One of
Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall he be called. thy maker, the one who created
you, the one who sustains you both physically and spiritually,
he says, is your husband. He's your bridegroom and he's
shown that love to us in so many different ways. Psalm 19 verse
5, Which, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is as a bridegroom
coming out of his chamber. Now that's our hope this morning,
that the Lord Jesus Christ as the bridegroom would come out
of his chamber and give his bride reason to rejoice in what he's
done to redeem her and to sanctify her. In Isaiah chapter 61 verse
10, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments. There's his love for us, that
he's covered our shameful nakedness with the robe of his own righteousness. In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing. The only hope that I have of
being able to stand accepted in the presence of a holy God
is that my husband would dress me with his righteousness and
cover my nakedness with that fleece that was taken from the
lamb slain before the foundation of the world. What a picture
we have of the Lord Jesus Christ as the last Adam in the first
Adam. When it was Eve that was deceived,
here she is, the bride of her husband, and she's easily deceived. Isn't that true of us? We're
so easily confused and deceived by the lies of Satan. And what does Adam do? Adam follows
her in her sin, doesn't he? She brings the fruit to Adam,
and the scripture doesn't speak of him eating of the fruit, being
deceived. The scripture speaks of him taking
the fruit with open eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing.
And though there's no justification for Adam's sin, it is a picture
of what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us when he went to Calvary's
cross. He was never deceived by Satan. He walked into the sin of his
bride willingly with his eyes wide open. He ate of the fruit
and suffered the curse of God's wrath and God's judgment in order
to save his wife. What love? What love? This is
the mystery. Husbands, yes, love your wives
as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. He laid down his life for the
sheep. The Lord Jesus Christ is not
a frustrated suitor. He's not, contrary to popular
opinion, the Lord Jesus Christ is not trying to save everybody. He's never tried to do anything.
He's the God of glory. He's omnipotent. He possesses
all power and he's a God of purpose and what he sets out to do, he
accomplishes. He said, I lay down my life for
the sheep, not for the goats. I'm not trying to woo a woman
to me that is unwilling to receive my love. When I'm ready, I will
make her willing in the day of my power, and she will be brought
to me willingly." That's His grace. That's His power. That's
our hope, isn't it? If it's any other way than that's
left up to me, something I've got to do, no. He purchased his bride with his
own precious blood. He didn't lay down His life for
the world. He makes that clear in John chapter 17, doesn't He?
He said, Father, I pray not for the world. I pray for them which
Thou hast given Me out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou
hast given them unto Me. This is His bride. This is His
church. This is what He came to do. And
He accomplished it, didn't He? He's not a frustrated suitor.
He accomplished the salvation of his bride. He saved her. When
he bowed his mighty head on Calvary's cross and cried, it is finished. Everything necessary for the
salvation of his bride was accomplished. He's Hosea, isn't he? Gomer had sold herself. and ended up on the slave market,
on the auction block. And the Lord told Hosea to go
and buy her. And he bought her to himself
and brought him home and made this woman, who was living in
open shame, he bought her. and made her to be his bride. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
has done for us. We are Gomer. We're in the shame
of our own sin. We've been put out there on the
auction block. And if Hosea doesn't come and
pay the ransom price, and that's exactly what he did, didn't he? He put to death our previous
husband. That's what the scripture says
in Romans chapter 7. We were married to another, but
he has killed that husband. That husband that we were married
to is the law, and now we're dead to the law, and the law
is dead to us. The law has nothing to say to
us. We've been married to another. We have a new husband. There's
nothing that will justify what David did in the killing of Uriah. Yet, here again we have a picture
of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in putting away the
law. Uriah's name means the fire of
God. That's what his name means. And
that's all we have to look forward to if we are under the law. The
only thing we have to look forward to is the fiery judgment of God's
wrath. Uriah had to be put to death
in order for Bathsheba to become the wife of King David, the man
after God's own heart, the sweet psalmist of Israel, the one who
pictures for us the shepherd of the sheep, the King, the Lord
Jesus Christ. What a glorious picture! The
same thing is true with Nabal. Now what was David's other wife's
name? Abigail. You remember Abigail?
Abigail was married to a man by the name of Nabal and his
name means fool. And Nabal had to die in order
for Abigail to become the wife of King David. What a picture
of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. He's put us to death
to the law and the law to us and married us to another. We
were once married to a husband that was abusive, an abusive
man. Woke up every morning to find
him sitting there looking at us with disgust. Telling us how
ugly we were and how unable we were to satisfy his demands.
And threatening us every day, one day I'm going to kill you.
Now, you know, I don't recommend people getting divorced often,
but if a woman came to me and said she was married to that
kind of a man, I'd tell her you need to get away from him. You
need to get away from him. A man is threatening to kill
you? A man that abuses you like that? And that's what we were
under. That's what the law was doing.
It was telling us how ugly we were. It was telling us how unable
we were to satisfy its demands, and it was threatening every
day to one day kill us. And the bridegroom came, satisfied
the demands of the law. put it away once and for all,
covered all our sin by his shed blood, and bought us, like Hosea
to Gomer, to himself, and made us his bride." That's the mystery. That's the picture here. Yes,
husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the church
and gave himself for it. You see that? What a glorious
Savior we have. He's the husband of His church. Look at verse 26 in Ephesians
chapter 5, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing
of the water by the Word. Now when the Lord redeems one
of His children, you know what He does? He opens up His Word
to them. And you know what? They can have
a seminary degree and spend years studying this book and have no
understanding of what it means until the Lord is pleased to
open the eyes of their understanding and sanctify them through the
washing of the water by His Word. They can study this book and
understand its historical setting. They can understand some theological
concepts. They can understand the precepts
of the law. But to have the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself revealed to them, that's the work of grace. This book
is not a, you know, people read this book, they think, well,
like I said, they'll read Ephesians 5, 24, and they'll say, well,
I need to love my wife like Christ loved the church. You just focus
on how Christ loved the church. And the rest of it will take
care of itself. But they do. Men make a rule
book out of this, don't they? In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. That's a miracle of grace for
the Lord to sanctify you, to make you holy, to wash you clean
with His Word, and to give you the faith to believe the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, and is revealed in this
book. That's what this book is all
about. It is a revelation of the person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord said to those self-righteous
Pharisees, very religious, you search the Scriptures, you search
them, because you think in them you have eternal life. You pride
yourself in your study of the Bible, you pride yourself in
your memorization, you pride yourself in what you think you're
doing to keep the rules and regulations of Scripture. But you've missed
altogether the message of the Bible, for these are they which
testify of me. Now that's a miracle of grace.
You've got to be a bride, you've got to be the bride of the bridegroom. You've got to be brought into
the family of God and made to be married to the Lord Jesus
Christ before you're going to see Him in the Scriptures. The
natural man cannot receive the things of God. What does this
do to us? It causes us to cry. Lord, don't
leave me to my own understanding. Don't leave me to my own devices. Lord, no amount of intelligence,
no amount of study, no amount of discipline, no amount of effort
is going to uncover the mystery of the gospel unless you make
it known to me. that he might do it. He sanctifies to himself. He
makes holy. He washes. And how does he do
it? He does it by the water of the word of God. James put it
like this, of his own will begat he us with the word of truth. with the Word of Truth, the gospel
of His free grace, the declaration of who the Lord Jesus Christ
is and what it is He has accomplished for His people. That's what He
does for His bride. The bride of Christ is the only
people that can see it. The only ones. I love what when the Lord, just
before his crucifixion that night when he met with the disciples
and celebrated the Passover and had the Last Supper with them,
and the Lord, the scripture says, put a towel around his waist
and took a basin of water and took the position of the lowliest
servant in the room to wash the feet of the disciples. And what
did Peter say? Peter pulled his feet back, said,
you're not washing my feet. And the Lord said, Peter, if
I don't wash your feet, you have no part with me. Oh Lord, just
wash me all over. Wash me all over, if that's what
it takes. And what'd the Lord say to Peter?
No, Peter, you're already clean. You're already clean. Why? Because you know who I am. You
just confessed that I'm the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And
I just told you, upon this rock I'll build my church and the
gates of hell shall not be able to prevail against it. Peter,
the revelation of who I am has already been made known to you. So why do we keep going back
to the Word? Because we live in a dry and dusty land, don't
we? We walk around And our feet get dirty, don't they? We have
to come back again and again and again as the bride of the
Lord Jesus Christ to have our feet washed. Lord, wash my feet. And He does it by the water of
His Word. That's how He does it. That's
how He accomplishes our cleansing. By the water of His Word. And He does it for every one
of His all his bride. I was just thinking about Solomon. You know Solomon had 600 concubines
and 300 wives. And the scripture says, and he
loved every one of them. He loved every one of them. What
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He just loves his bride. He doesn't show favoritism. He loves every one of His children.
And He provides for them through the washing of the water of His
Word. And He gives to them the faith
to believe what is declared in His Word. It's not what you do. It's what's
been done for you. It's what's been accomplished.
We're not a religious organization. We're not here to put men under
the law. We're not here to give you a
bunch of rules and regulations to follow in order to try to
make your life better. We're here to tell you about
the bridegroom, the husband of his bride, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who provides everything for his bride. in the Old Testament. People read the Old Testament
and they think, well, that was a pretty chauvinistic culture. Only the
men could receive the inheritance. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Because it's all about Christ. It's all about the Gospel. And
the Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten of the Father. And so He receives the full inheritance. And the only hope that we have
of being able to enjoy the inheritance of God, the blessings that God
has given to his own son, is to be married to that man. To
be married to them. And when we are, we have everything
he's got. Everything he's got. You know, my wife and I have
been married how many years? Forty-two. Forty-two. Everything I've got is hers.
Everything she's got is mine. We don't have his and her stuff.
You know, it's just, it's ours. And that's the way it is. Everything
that the Lord Jesus Christ has been rewarded with, His bride
receives by inheritance. Look at verse 27, that he might
present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle
or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Boy, I tell you, you look at
yourself, you don't see yourself without spot and blemish. You
don't see yourself holy because you're not. But in Him you are. If you're married to Christ,
He presents Himself to the Father on your behalf and in Him, You
are without blemish, without spot, without sin, without any
defilement whatsoever, perfect as he is in the presence of God. It's the only way God can have
anything to do with us. His eyes are too pure to look
upon sin. God can't fellowship with anything
that's not as holy as he is. So He has to impute to us. He has to charge to our account
the holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when He does, He
sees no distinction between Him and us. What a glorious gospel. What
a glorious God. You say, but I've got so much
sin in my life. Yeah, me too. You know what?
That's one of the blessings that God has given us to cause us to find all our hope
in Christ. You're telling me that my sin
is a blessing? Yes. Yes. I'm telling you that your
sin is a blessing. Turn with me in your Bibles to
Genesis chapter 24. Chapter 25. Rebekah was Isaac's favored wife. You remember when Isaac went
and worked for Laban and Laban deceived him? Isaac thought he
was working for Rebekah and Laban gave him Leah? And the scripture
says that he hated Leah. And he loved Rebecca. And so
Laban said, all right, well, I'll give you Rebecca, but you
have to work seven more years. And the scripture says that it
was as nothing to him. He loved Rebecca so much that
those seven years of labor just were nothing. But now he's married
to Rebecca, and Rebecca's barren. She's barren. She doesn't have
any children. Leah's having children and Rebecca's
not having any children. And Isaac goes before the Lord
and prays for his wife and she conceives. And look what she
says, verse 21, and Isaac entreated
the Lord for his wife because she was barren and the Lord was
entreated of him and Rebecca his wife conceived. Isaac's a
picture of Christ and Rebecca's a picture of his church. These
husband-wife relationships are the mystery of Christ and his
church. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
now is praying for us that we might bear children And here's
the children. Here's what happens. And the
children struggled together within her. And she said, If it be so,
why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the
Lord. She had twins in her womb. And these twin boys were fighting
one another in her womb. And she was greatly concerned.
She said, Why am I this way? Do you ever feel that way? Sinners do. Once God makes you
to be a sinner, oh, it's more than just having some bad habits
and things that you want to get rid of. You've got two natures.
You've got two complete opposing natures within you. And you're
brought by the realization of those two natures within you
to say, why am I thus? Why am I like this? And look at verse 23, the Lord
said unto her, the Lord answered her prayer. Two nations are in
thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.
And the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the
elder shall serve the younger. Now you know who the two boys
are, Esau and Jacob. And we often look at those two
boys as the two nations in the world, the lost and the saved.
But here we see them as a picture of our two natures. And they're
struggling within us. But here's the promise of God.
The older, which was Esau, which is a picture of our flesh, our
sin, shall serve the younger, which is a picture of our new
nature, our new man in Christ. And this struggle that is within. Jacob always ends up on top.
Always. Now you may fall into grievous,
grievous sin, but if you're a child of God, if you're a bride of
the bridegroom, if you're the wife of this husband, he's going
to see to it that you're brought back to him. And He's going to
use the very presence of Esau to bring you back to Himself. The older shall serve the younger. Now, years ago I used to go deer
hunting. And you could stalk hunt or you
could tree stand hunt, or you could participate in a deer drive. And a deer drive is where one
guy took the bloodhounds and got a mile or so away in the
woods and drove those bloodhounds through the woods to push the
deer toward where the hunters were stationed. And that's where
you wanted to be. You didn't want to be the guy
driving the dogs, because you had to work your way through
the woods, through the thickets. And you never got a chance to
shoot a deer, because the deer were always in front of the dogs.
But those bloodhounds would drive those deer right into the presence
of the hunter. The bloodhound of your flesh
is what drives your new nature. into the arms of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The struggle that you have with
your sin is the very thing that your husband uses to remind you
of your need for him. And he pushes you right into
the presence of your husband. The older shall serve the younger.
They will. The Lord's pleased to provide
for his wife in every way. And he's a faithful husband. When David was out in a battle
against the Philistines one time, And another army came in, and
the scripture says that their wives and children were in a
city called Ziklag, and when David came back from the battle,
Ziklag was on fire, and all the wives and children were taken.
And they were all grieved, and David gathered together his army,
and they went after the wives and children, and you know what
the Word of God says? And David recovered all. Not one child, not one wife was
lost. He recovered every one of them. The Lord Jesus Christ always,
always, always stands for the dignity and the honor of His
wife. And He provides for her. He'll provide for her through
the washing of the water of His Word. He provided for her through
the shedding of His blood. He provides for her through her
own sin. And when she's taken captive,
he always brings her home. Always. He recovers everything. He won't lose one. Not one of
my sheep will be lost. All right, let's take a break.