Tyson and Laura

The whole earth is full of God’s glory. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness of it. Everything that exists was created by Him, and so it is that everything declares the weight of His glory. No matter how small—whether a tiny rock flower, or a sub-atomic particle, or a grain of sand—every discrete and particular thing speaks about God. The supernovas and galaxies do the same. Every finite thing has the privilege of speaking about an infinite noun, maker of Heaven and earth. Each created thing in some sense carries the eternal weight of glory, and of course it can only do this because the source of that glory, God Himself, has willed it.

So every last thing manifests His glory, and this is why we, dulled by sin, can start to take everything for granted. We begin to think that the world is “just the way things are.” When everything is glorious, we think that nothing must be.

This is why God in His mercy will often take special pains to manifest His glory. He goes out of His way. When He does this, we are not moving from no glory to glory, or from dull glory to radiant glory, but rather from constant glory to manifest glory. God does this through the Incarnation of Jesus, through the giving of Scripture, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, through the kindness of miracles, and through the revelation brought to us by various poetic and prophetic insights.

What a miracle does is draw our attention to what God does all the time. When Jesus turned water to wine at Cana He was simply doing in fast forward what God has done in every vineyard since the beginning of the world. He enables us to see the whole by showing us a part, sped up a little.

When we pray for a glimpse of glory, we are not asking to be let in on a wonderful secret against the context of the ordinary and mundane. We are not seeing vivid color against the background of a dull sepia tone. No, we are being invited to see the whole world rightly.

And all this relates to our prayer for this new household, just now forming. The prayer is taken from the words of Moses in Psalm 90.

“Let Your work appear to Your servants, And Your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, And establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:16-17, NKJV).

Notice the prayer is not to let God’s work be done—God’s work is always done. Let Your work appear. The prayer is not that God’s glory be present; God’s glory is always present. No—let His glory appear to the children of His servants. How will this be done? When it is done, the beauty of the Lord our God is upon us. God is always beautiful, and His works are always beautiful—but Lord, let us see it. Remember that the man who wrote these wonderful words was Moses, the same man who once pleaded with God for just a glimpse of His glory. Moses had a hunger for the right thing (Ex. 33:18).

As the Lord’s work appears, as His glory appears to our children, as His beauty descends to rest heavily upon us, what happens? How is this done? Moses says it twice. Establish the work of our hands. Let me say that again—establish the work of our hands. This is where glory and beauty will be made manifest. The gift is to the heart, and it will open your eyes. Evangelical faith is what does the seeing. But what it will see is the work of your hands.

The first such work will occur in just a few moments when you hold hands to exchange your vows. And the favor, and the grace, and the beauty of the Lord will rest heavily upon your hands, and upon all the following work that your hands will do. And what will follow? Everything will follow.

These are the hands that will cook countless meals, carry sick children in the middle of the night, paint the walls of your new home, make love, guide the steering wheel as you shuttle the kids from school to baseball practice, as you do it again the next day, as you hold the book to read to your family, and as you button up coats to go and worship the Lord every Lord’s Day. I am not just exhorting you to think this way about your hands, I am pronouncing a benediction over your hands. May the beauty of the Lord rest upon you, and may He establish the work of your hands. In the name of the Lord Jesus, may He establish the work of your hands.

Tyson, I have an exhortation for you. You have determined, under the guidance of God, to begin the great and terrifying work of building your house. This is not something that you should be doing for God, in the hope of then receiving some kind of reward afterward. He is the one that will do the work, and the fact that He is willing to do that work with you as an instrument . . . that is the reward. Furthermore, it is a reward of grace. He who finds a good wife finds a blessing from the Lord. Everything about this is sheer blessing—blessings all the way down to the foundation stones, and the foundation stones themselves are a blessing. All is grace, from grace to grace, grace piled on top of grace. Now remember this— unless the Lord builds the house, the one who labors does so in vain. So if God does not work into your marriage, to will and to do according to His good pleasure, nothing is going to work out. So from start to finish, from beginning to end, your charge is this. Be hungry for the blessing of God. Be hungry for God to establish the work of your hands. Be hungry for God to beautify the work of your hands. Be hungry, like Moses was, for manifested glory.

Laura, your charge is this. When Tyson extends his hand, take it. Be responsive. A whole theology of marriage is bound up in this. When he reaches out, reach back. Meet him. Teach him how pleasant it is to extend his hand to you. Don’t chide him for the previous time when he forgot to, or complain about how he did it wrong. And when a man extends his hand as a question, and a woman decides, and answers him, what is that? When she reaches out to him in response, what is that? Among other things, it is glory. Solomon, the wisest of men, said that there were three or four things that were entirely beyond him, and the way of a man with a maid was one of them. There are staggering mysteries here. I believe that every thoughtful man who has ever lived has known why he would extend his hand. The reason for that is pretty obvious . . . and obviously pretty. The mystery, the thing that beats all, is why she would do anything but walk away. Laura, you have responded, and Tyson has now been given your hand in marriage. Your hand has been offered to him in response to his question, and this means that grace, glory, and beauty have arrived. You are the grace of God manifest. The woman is the glory of man. You are the crown of your husband. Remember that. Treasure it. Be humbled by it.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.