Faith Presbyterian Church

Marriage and Christian Joy

November 28, 1999 AM
By Rev. Dr. Robert S. Rayburn
From: The Doctrine and Practice of Marriage

Review

1. The establishment of marriage and the creation of man and woman for marriage.
2. Celebratory Speech as the primary means of the practice of married love.
3. The Headship of the man in marriage and the submission of wives as realities of nature, and so divine callings, that are to be sanctified and practiced in a Christ-like way, to the mutual pleasure and blessing of man and woman.
4. The endemic temptations of married life: the peculiar temptations of men and women in marriage and where, so often, marriages go wrong.
5. Then we considered the biblical data concerning the proper choice of a spouse, and were reminded that as one old father said, "Repentance mends all things but an ill-made marriage", on the one hand, and, on the other, "He that marrieth a prudent godly woman is sure to have the Lord Himself for his father-in-law." [Fraser of Brea, Memoir, 264, 262]
6. Then, over two weeks, we considered marriage as a sexual union and as the divinely ordained context for sexual pleasure and fulfillment.
7. We then treated marriage as a primary sphere of life in which Christians are to work out their salvation, experience the grace of God, and serve the Lord.
8. And, finally, last week, we considered the challenge posed to marriage by the emergence of the two career family. Someone has said that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage (Rev. 19) and that marriage is one of the chief ways in which God reveals himself, his love, and his salvation to the world. Well, if that is so, no wonder the Devil attacks marriage – to spoil the analogy and ruin the effect of the comparison between marriage and Christ’s love for his bride.

Some of you have spoken to me of your hopes that I would address this subject or that. I have tried to cover what I feel are the subjects the Bible itself directly addresses in its teaching concerning marriage and, in particular, the subjects that are central to the Bible’s picture of a godly married life. Insofar as marriage is so integral to the life of a Christian man and woman almost any subject could be discussed in relation to marriage, but we must make an end somewhere. Mr. Pfefferle is at the end of the Trinity and I must be at the end of marriage!

But I wanted to end on one particular note. In one respect it is the recapitulation of all I have said so far, but it is also a point worth mentioning for itself. I am speaking of

Marriage and Christian Joy

In the marriage service we read that "God has established and sanctified marriage for the welfare and happiness of mankind." It is of that "happiness" that marriage is to convey to people that I want to speak in concluding our series of studies.

One scholar has said this about joy’s place in the Christian life.

"It is astonishing, and certainly does not need to be verified by quotations, how many references there are in the Old and New Testament to delight, joy, bliss, exultation, merry-making and rejoicing, and how emphatically these are demanded from the Book of Psalms to the Epistle to the Philippians." [K. Barth, CD, III, 4, 375]

I have told you before that over the mantel of Nathaniel Ward’s (1578-1652) home in Ipswich a former occupant is said to have carved three words representing the sum of Puritan ethics: sobriety, justice, and piety. Ward had a fourth word added when he moved in: laughter. And is this not right. And was not Lewis right to say that "It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can!" [A Severe Mercy, 189]

After all, the bible makes joy an essential part of the true and faithful response of the believing heart to the gospel.

1. In Deut. 28:47 we hear the Lord threatening curses upon his people if they "did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity."
2. When the Lord sets out to describe the true character of the godly, he begins by saying "Happy are the poor in spirit…happy are the meek…happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness…"
3. In John 16:22 he promises his people that when the Holy Spirit comes the joy of the disciples will be complete and that no one will take it from them.
4. In the epistles of Paul we read that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but "joy in the Holy Spirit" and are commanded to "rejoice in the Lord always" and Peter speaks of a "joy unspeakable and full of glory" that is a mark of Christian life and experience.

We have a certain fear, in this day and age, that making too much of personal happiness will play into the hands of the self-serving and self-adoring spirit of our day and turn the Christian life into the pursuit, not of God’s glory, but of one’s own happiness and pleasure and fulfillment. We must certainly take care here to be fully biblical and serious in our consideration of Christian joy.

But, it is undeniably true, as Jonathan Edwards put it,

"Jesus knew that all mankind were in the pursuit of happiness. He has directed them in the true way to it, and He tells them what they must become in order to be blessed and happy."

Lloyd Jones explains it this way.

"Happiness is the great question confronting mankind. The whole world is longing for happiness and it is tragic to observe the ways in which people are seeking it. The vast majority are, alas, are doing so in a way that is bound to produce misery." [Sermon on the Mount, I, 32]

"Man is a slave to that by which he wishes to find happiness." So said Augustine [Of the True Religion, 69]. Jesus agreed and, rather than telling people that they shouldn’t worry about happiness or that they should seek other things first, he tells them how to find true and lasting happiness.

Now, obviously, Christian joy is a theological joy, it is rooted in our knowledge of God, in the experience of Christ’s love, in the forgiveness of our sins and in the prospect of eternal life in a world of joy. But that does not mean that this joy cannot be and is not to be fostered and cultivated and preserved and expressed in a great many different ways or experienced in many different dimensions of life.

Jesus, for example, compares the joy he grants his disciples to the joy of a mother who has given birth to a child or the joy of a man who finds a treasure hidden in a field. There is joy in all sorts of things in life. But, for a Christian all those things are from God and to be enjoyed in the Lord. Because we live and move and have our being in God, because whatever we do we are to do to the glory of God, joy should be everywhere in a Christian’s life and can be experienced everywhere. And, because joy is our inheritance as the children of God, joy is something that can be practiced anywhere in life.

Take, for example, the account of Ezra reading the law of God to the people on the Feast of Trumpets in Nehemiah 8. You remember what happened. The people wept as they heard God’s law read and then preached to them, because it was clear to them that they had not lived according to this law, they had betrayed it. Now you might have expected Nehemiah and Ezra to respond to this evident spirit of repentance with enthusiasm and try to build on it and deepen it. But, instead, Nehemiah told them to stop mourning and weeping. "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." And the people did as they were told and went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food to the needy and to celebrate with great joy.

I take away from an account like that, among other things, the truths that joy is to be practiced, that it can always be practiced by Christians – even in times and situations when it might be thought beyond the grasp – and that its practice is fundamental to a strong and fruitful Christian life. We need joy; we need lots of it. It is the counterpoise to the dreariness of sin, it is the evidence of a good creation and a great salvation. And whatever means may be employed to foster it in our lives ought to be exploited to the full. Hence the number of feasts in the Bible – banquets with good food and drink and a convivial spirit. This is why the celebration of Christmas is such a Christian thing and serves such a Christian purpose.

Well, all of this being said, we have now to look at marriage and notice once more how the Bible connects married love and life with joy.

1. We return to the first expression of married love in the Bible, Adam’s exclamation over Eve when first she was created for him, and we hear joy in those exuberant and excited expressions he used there.
2. Or, take the father’s wish for his son, in Prov. 5:18, that his son might marry and "rejoice in the wife of his youth." That is a wonderful phrase. He might have used many other terms – "may you find fulfillment"; "may you be satisfied with"; etc. – but he used the word "rejoice" – the ordinary word for "rejoice"; the word used, e.g. at Ps. 122:1: "I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord."
3. Or the Song of Songs, the Bible’s own celebration of wedded love. The poems are shot through with joy. The wedding, we read in 3:11, is "the day his heart rejoiced." We are reminded of Ps. 19:5: "In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course." Or, Jer. 62:5: "As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over a bride, so will your God rejoice over you."

This does not surprise us. We know the joy of love. Weddings are regularly among the happiest events in the ordinary course of human life. But, then, we must face the implications of this connection between marriage and married love and joy. God gave us marriage, as the service says, to make us happy! We are therefore to be happy in our marriages. Marriage is one of those ways, and one of the most important ways, more important than feasts, for example – for marriage is our life every day – for us to cultivate, deepen, preserve, and practice our joy.

I want all of you to be happy, I want you to be very happy! Happy in the pure, honest, and deep way in which Christians are to be and can be happy. We need that happiness for the spiritual strength it imparts to us – it is far easier to undertake almost any duty or to bear almost any burden when one is really happy – and for the recommendation of the gospel that the happiness of Christians is to the world. And a happy marriage is a very important part of that happiness of life, so great a part of life as marriage is and so intimately connected to all the rest of our lives as marriage is.

Do you remember the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, recorded for us in 1 Kings 10?

She came with her great caravan to see for herself if what she had heard about Israel’s great king were true. And, when she had seen Solomon’s court and capital and spoken with him and tested him with questions, she said,

"The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe these things until I cam and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard" And then she said this. "How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!" [vv. 7-8]

Well, that is the idea. To have women, especially unsaved women, say to our wives, after seeing the way they are loved by their husbands, to hear the husbands celebrate their wives in their speech, "How happy you must be to have such a husband, such a marriage!" And men to say the same to our men concerning their wives and their marriages. How happy you must be!

Lloyd Jones put it this way in a sermon on joy in the Christian life [cited Murray, vol. 2, 36].

"Let us in our married relationships show how Christ binds together two persons in holy love…let us so live in this relationship that people of the world looking at us shall say, ‘Would to God we could live like that; would to God we were as happy as they are…’"

And, if we are Christians together in a marriage – man and woman – we cannot say that it ought not to be so; we cannot say that it cannot be so. We know that God created us for marriage and for one another. We know there is nothing wrong with marriage itself, God made it. If there is a problem, it has to be with us. We know what God expects and requires of us, both of husbands and of wives. We know what it means to love, appreciate, and celebrate one another with our speech and to cultivate the erotic dimension of married love. We know that the commandments of God are not burdensome. We know that in keeping the commandments of God there is a great reward and that he who loses his life – to love his wife as she must be loved – will gain his own life – in the joy and pleasure and satisfaction of a very happy marriage. Surely, it takes two to tango and one spouse cannot make up for the disinterest or unfaithfulness of the other. But, I hope I am speaking by and large to Christian men and women who equally feel the obligations of faithfulness to God in their marriage, to love and make happy the spouse God gave to him or to her.

Sooner or later we must face the implications of all of this material, and you men and you husbands must face it in particular, and put the question directly: how happy am I and how happy is my wife? How happy, how delightful is our marriage? How much is my marriage an engine of joy in my life and in the life of my wife?

Or, put it backwards and ask yourself if you could say this about your marriage as James Fraser of Brea said it about his.

"…the Lord showed His mercy to me, in giving me a comfortable and suitable yokefellow, who did me good and not evil all the days of her life. In her did I behold as in a glass the Lord’s love to me, by her were the sorrows of my pilgrimage many times sweetened, and she made me frequently forget my sorrows and griefs, and was the greatest tentation to me of saying, ‘It is good for me to be here;’ so that I can seal to the truth of that, ‘An inheritance is from the fathers, but a good prudent wife is from the Lord, and whoso findeth her obtaineth favour of the Lord.’"

Can you say that your wife is your greatest temptation to you, in that you so delight in her love that you fear you want to leave this world and be with the Lord less than you should. I am happy to tell you that I am subject to that temptation, and of the temptations of this life, that is about the happiest and the best and the purest of all temptations! I think God is quite happy to have his people struggle with the temptation to desire heaven less because they are so delighted with the love of their wives and get such pure pleasure out of their marriages.

So, husbands and wives, you seek one another’s happiness. I know, I can guarantee you that you are not as happy in love as you can be! If you are going to push the envelope anywhere in your life, why not there? See how happy in love you can become, what perfect pleasure and joy you can get from your marriage, before the Lord takes one of you home to himself. There is a goal to set for life. You men, especially, make it the goal of your life to see how happy you can make your wife, how much sexual pleasure you can learn to give her, how much romantic fire you can put into your love, much pure fun you can find in living with her, and how much glory you can give to God by demonstrating how good, how kind, how wise he was to make marriage and men and women for marriage and to order married life as he did in his Word.

Luther once said,

"According to the Word of God, there is no more precious treasure on earth than that of holy marriage. God’s highest gift is a pious, amiable, God-fearing and domestic wife, with whom you may live in harmony, to whom you may entrust all you have, indeed, your body and your very life, and with whom you may bear children." [Cited in German in Schaff, Church History, vol. viii, 417n]

Now, you husbands, prove the great Reformer true!

And if you do, my brothers, your lot may be like that of the great Jonathan Edwards who, when he came to die, had breath for one last word to the three at his bedside – his daughters Lucy and Esther and his doctor, a Dr. Shippen, the one who had administered the small-pox vaccination from which he died. We expect that with but breath to say one thing more, a man of the stature of Edwards would say something memorable about the grace of God, or the love of Christ, or the righteousness that was his by faith. And, in a way he did. But he gave witness to those things in an entirely different way.

"Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever."

We will, you and I, have done well by the Lord, the giver of every good gift and the one who desires that husbands and wives love one another and delight in one another deeply, if a goodly number of us think to say such a thing when we are about to leave the world!