If you look around for a moment, you should see at once that we worship and serve a God who delights. He delights to create and make, and He delights to create and make beautifully. When we learn the nature of the divine majesty from that which is made, as Paul indicates, we learn much more than that He is powerful and mighty. The universe is not just big, it is also lovely. Our God is the consummate artist.
Everything He does, He does in such a way as to be able then to crown it. Virtually all His glories have crowning glories afterwards. Whenever we think we are done, He astonishes us with yet another artistic stroke that leaves us breathless. In the created order, after God had made the world, the heavens and the earth, He crowned this inorganic creation with life. And when He was done with creating teeming life everywhere, He crowned that with a creature made in His own image, a man. And when we might have expected Him to be satisfied and done with that, He said it was not good, put Adam into a deep sleep, took a rib from his side, and fashioned a woman.
And when Adam saw her, he spoke the first recorded human words, and they were words of poetry—bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. This was a divine surgery, crowned with poetry. And the man, the glory of all creation, found himself glorified with a woman. The virtuous woman, Scripture says, is the crown of her husband (Prov. 12:4). He who finds a wife, Scripture says in another place, finds a good thing (Prov. 18:22). A man who spurns this gift, for whatever reason, is rejecting a coronation.
But there is something more. Again, if you look around, something else should strike you. There was trouble in Paradise, and the serpent-worm deceived our first mother, and enticed our first father to rebel against God’s express commandment and warning. In a world full of good things, only one thing had been prohibited, and that only for a time, and our parents were tempted to grab when they should have waited and obeyed. And when they fell, the world over which they had been given dominion fell with them. Death entered the world through Adam, and the entire created order groans with longing, waiting for the day when God will restore humanity in Christ, and put everything back to rights. This means that this vista before you is a ruin of what once was. What was the unfallen created order like? And what will it be like again?
So this brings us to the next astonishing twist, the next unexpected crowning glory. After we threw God’s glorious gifts away with contempt, God could have been expected to erupt in fury and destroy us all. What He actually did was the chief and crowning glory, beyond which can expect nothing more. Through His Son, He became a man in order to suffer, bleed and die, in order that we might be forgiven and restored. There is a peculiar kind of crowning glory that can only be manifested in a world of sin and corruption, and this was the ultimate example of it. God, the perfect God, became through His Son a perfect man in a deranged world, and died to restore that world, and in His resurrection He did indeed restore it.
So what does all this have to do with a wedding? Here we are, fallen men and women, gathered on a fallen hillside, looking out at fallen wonders, and we have done this in order to witness the union of a fallen man and woman. We do this in faith, expecting God to do great things. As we have seen, God is like that.
The created glories are still here, all around us, and we must still reckon with them, and enjoy them. Nethaniel, you were made to exercise dominion. You were created to labor, and to build, and to fashion, and to make. You are taking on the office of protector and provider. These labors that God has placed in your hand—because of the Fall—are attended with greater difficulties than they otherwise would have been, but there are still wonderful things to be accomplished in this life. May the Spirit of the Lord rest upon you, as He did upon the ancient craftsmen of Israel, to equip you for all such things. But the reason we are here today is that God did not want you to pursue this vocation unadorned. Every wedding of a Christian man to a Christian woman is a coronation. Emily is your crown, your glory, and your symbol of office.
Emily, this does not make you a mere ornament, or a trinket. You are a crown of glory, and this too is a weighty office. You are a biblical crown, not a plastic tiara. The beauty of a faithful woman is, as Scripture says, as terrible as an army with banners. In taking on this office, you will be a noble woman, fulfilling the noble role that God has appointed for you. You will look to Nethaniel and be able to say “my king,” but that phrase does not have the same meaning that it does in the mouth of a serf or peasant. When you say my king, you are doing so as the crown that makes him a king. You look up to him, that is true, but you are also the height upon which he stands.
But this all has reference to your labors in restoring the created order in Christ. As you do this, both of you should never forget the chief glory, referred to earlier. This is a fallen world, and you are marrying in that fallen world, and in your marriage you will have a great and pressing need for grace, and for more grace. And when that grace has done its work, it will then be time to call in for more grace. Remember that when we wrecked the beautiful gift of a perfect world that God had given us, He did not respond by smashing us all. He did not fly into a temper tantrum. Rather, one of the first things He did was promise us a Messiah, a redeemer, one who would crush the dragon’s head, bruising his own heel in the process.
This means that both of you, man and woman both, are being given the charge to bear with one another, to forgive one another, to give way to one another, to extend grace to one another. This beginning of your marriage is on the top of a mountain, with beautiful vistas in virtually every direction. But you will be a married couple down in the valleys as well. In fact, you will be just as married there, and these vows that you are taking will go with you there. Nethaniel, you are called to love your wife, as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her. You are called to sacrifice, bleed, suffer and die. And you are to do it all in imitation of the Lord, who did it for the joy that was set before Him. This means you are to sacrifice, bleed and die gladly. He knew what He was doing, and so should you. Emily, you are to respond to him in such a way as to make all that he does worthwhile. He does it all for the joy set before him, and you are to recognize and embrace the fact that you are that joy. You expect what he does, not because you take it for granted, but rather because the Lord has made you a wise woman. This is what God has given us to do.
Nethaniel, Emily, your home, your family, is being established here today. In just moments, the vows will be said. As a minister of Jesus Christ, it is with great joy that I solemnly charge you to maintain this home as a true haven of grace, the crown of all things. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.