The greatest philosophical question that mankind has come up with on his own is this one: “Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?” And the Christian answer to this question is that the living and true God, out of His grace and good pleasure, determined to create everything that is, which includes all that we see around us, and all that we could ever possibly see.
But our seeing, our experience, is not outside this reality. It is no exception to this. The wonders of creation, along with all the wondering creatures in it, were spoken into existence by the kindest words imaginable, which were “let there be . . .” The observed is created, and all the observers are created as well. And so it is that the earth is full of His glory. Please remember that word glory—we shall come back to it.
There is a problem, however. The glory was interrupted, and our perceptions of that glory have gotten dislocated, and completely out of joint. Scripture teaches that the effect of sin is that it causes us to fall short of the glory of God. Once the great work of creation is done, once the wonderful task is accomplished, it is the easiest thing in the world for ungrateful creatures to take for granted the staggering glories that surround each of us daily, and to assume that “all this” is just the way things are. The universe “just is,” and we just happened to evolve out of the primordial goo. Scientism has been most eager to help us with our rationalizations. There is no need to thank anyone, we say to ourselves, and so we may just proceed with our lives—which usually consists of chasing, of course, the next shiny object.
This problem, of course, is the problem of ingratitude. Like the nine lepers healed by Jesus who simply took the new state of affairs as their natural possession by right, and did not return to Him to give thanks, we harden our hearts and stiffen our necks. We stop thanking God for our food, for our shelter, for a spectacularly beautiful world, for a Christian upbringing, for the sun in the sky, and for the air in our lungs. This truly is an ingrate world.
But there are two important things to realize here, two great occasions for thanksgiving. One is that God has given us a world teeming with things to be grateful for, and the second is that since we have fallen, and have become a most ungrateful people, He has also purchased—with the blood of His Son—a way for us to become grateful again. That way is the blood-purchased road back to the Father. This is why Jesus is everything. This is why our only real choice in this world is between Christ and nothing.
This is all very well, but why are we talking about this at a wedding? Marriage was established by God before our race fell into the morass of ingratitude that engulfs us. This means that marriage is one of the chief delights of creation, one of the central things to be grateful for. But God also declares that marriage was established in anticipation of the gospel, the way back into gratitude. This is a great mystery, Paul says, but I speak of Christ and the Church. Every Christian wedding declares this wonderful truth—every Christian wedding is an ordinance of the first creation, as well as a sacred ordinance of the new creation, the re-creation.
Doug, I earlier said that we were going to come back to that word glory. The Bible teaches that the man is the glory of God, and that the woman is the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:7). We are told plainly in Scripture that the man is the head of the woman. But because we are so steeped in our ingratitude, we think that if the man is the head, the woman must be the bottom of the foot. But there is another perspective. The man is the head, and therefore the woman must be the crown (Prov. 12:4). Paul makes an argument about authority and leadership from the creation order of man and woman (1 Tim. 2:12), an argument we rejoice in, but there is another argument from the creation order of the sexes to rejoice in as well. The woman was the very last thing created—not because she was an afterthought, but because she was intended to be the very capstone of the temple. God created the man first, but in order to glorify that man in the creation of woman.
So Doug, your charge is this. This is your wedding day, as you know, but it is also your coronation. This is not some mock exercise in “king-for-a-day” play acting; this is for the rest of your life. It is the real thing. You are the king, and Maggie is your crown. She is your crown, not your drudge. She is your crown, not your wage slave. And this is no party hat crown. A true crown, a weighty one, is being placed upon you, so make sure you stand up straight.
Maggie, Martin Luther once gave some very sound advice about marriage. He said, “Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” I want to give you a charge based on your half of that exhortation. When Doug comes home, day after day, live in such a way that when he is coming up the sidewalk, he is muttering to himself, “Maggie is the very best thing that ever happened to me. God created the woman last, and nothing can top it.” Notice how this brings us back to our earlier observations about grace and gratitude. You were created to be the grace of God to Doug—live as that grace. You are the focus of his gratitude—live as the focus of that gratitude. And the Bible teaches that when grace and gratitude combine, the result is glory. You are the glory of your husband. Live, by the grace of God, as that growing glory.
The enemy of our souls, the root cancer that destroys men and women is the refusal to honor God as God, and the refusal to give Him thanks. We live our lives in a dark and ungrateful world, and one of our great privileges is that of establishing Christian marriages, marriages that are shining beacons of grace, gratitude, and glory. It has been our privilege to place another stone in that temple wall today.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.
A hearty amen. Awesome.