His Devoted Bride

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Transcript:

You know, you go to a wedding and everybody stands up when the bride gets ready to come in and they all turn to look at the bride. I normally will turn the opposite direction, not just because I’m trying to be difficult, but everybody wants to look at the bride and look at her dress and all that. You can look at that all through the ceremony.

That’s not going anywhere. I like to turn and look at the groom because you only have a split second to catch that reaction when he sees her for the first time. And it’s great.

And I don’t know what’s normally going through the groom’s mind when he sees the bride for the first time, but I know what was going through my mind when I saw Charla for the first time. I told you all a few weeks ago at our wedding, and I didn’t wait for her to come up the aisle. There was a side door in the auditorium, and we talked about, you know, a lot of our ceremony dealt with the metaphor of marriage being like the union of Christ and the church and talked about how Christ goes and gets his church.

And even in Jesus’ day, part of their culture was that the groom would go get the bride and then there would be a procession to the place of the wedding. So there was a side door off the side of the auditorium. I actually, after I walked in with the wedding party, came down off the stage, walked down to that door, and went and got Charla.

And I remember opening the door and seeing her face right there. And there are pictures of me. Apparently, my reaction was blubbering, so I’m glad that everybody wasn’t able to see my face.

But I came face to face with Charla, and she had the biggest smile on her face, and I thought, good Lord, she’s going through with it. That was what I thought when I opened the door and I saw her face. She’s actually going through with this.

She actually does love me. But I knew how much work she had gone through in planning the wedding and picking out just the right dress. She actually had the dress picked out before I asked her to marry me because she knew it was coming.

I knew how much trouble she’d gone to to get just the right dress and her hair just right and makeup just right. And heaven knows how long she’d been standing behind that door waiting for me to come and get her. But she’d been waiting.

She’d been waiting for this. And so had I. But she’d been waiting for this, and I remember thinking she’s actually going through with this.

But I was just overcome when I opened the door because of the look that was on her face. It was just pure love. And I just remember thinking, I can’t believe she’s marrying me.

But it was just this devotion and this love written all over her face. And the Bible uses that kind of devotion from a bride to her groom as a picture of the church’s relationship toward Jesus. For the last several weeks, we’ve been looking at some of these pictures that the New Testament uses to describe the church, because as I’ve told you, each one of us tells us something about either God’s plan for us or God’s relationship toward us or something that God expects from us as the church.

But we look at these pictures and I know we talk about the church is the bride of Christ, the church is the body of Christ. But it’s important for us to stop and say, then what does that tell us about what’s supposed to happen? Each of those things. So as we go through this series of studies on these pictures of the church today, I want to look at the church as the bride of Christ. And we’re going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

2 Corinthians chapter 11. The Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, describes the church as a bride. Now, we’re going to read this passage.

We’re just going to look at four verses today. We’re going to read this passage in just a minute, but I need to give you some background so that the beginning of it will make sense, okay? Because he starts out with talking about putting up with the church needing to put up with his foolishness.

Well, if you just start cold at verse 1, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. To understand what he’s talking about here, you actually have to go back to 1 Corinthians. Don’t worry, I’m not going to preach my way through all of 1 Corinthians and the first 11 chapters of 2 Corinthians.

No, but you go back to 1 Corinthians and you see that Paul has written a letter to a church that’s in serious turmoil. There’s all sorts of sin, all sorts of heresy, all sorts of division going on in the church. It’s just, I mean, it’s a mess.

I mean, if you ever think our church has problems, read 1 Corinthians. We’re in pretty good shape, all right? We’re not a perfect church, but we’re in pretty good shape, all things considered.

So Paul wrote to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians to straighten out some of the problems they had because it was bad. I mean, if the church at Corinth had been a family, they would have been sent on the Jerry Springer show. Is that still a thing?

Is that still on? I don’t even know. But it was just that dysfunctional. So he wrote this letter to try to straighten them out.

Well, in the meantime, some of the people at Corinth repented because the second letter to Corinth is a little bit different. Some of the people had repented. Some of the church had turned around.

But there were always those people in the church at Corinth who said, well, who do you think you are? Don’t you feel that way when somebody comes up to you and says, you know, you’re in the wrong here. Well, who are you to tell me that?

I think that’s our natural human inclination. There was a group within the church at Corinth who said, well, who is Paul? I mean, it’s not like he’s Jesus or anything.

Who does he think he is? Throughout several places in 2 Corinthians, Paul comes back to the subject of, well, let’s talk about who I think I am. I’m the Apostle Paul.

And that’s not saying because Paul’s important, you should listen to me, but you should listen to me because Jesus put me in this position. God has given me this calling. He’s the one who has called me to be an apostle for this very purpose to teach and strengthen the churches and point them in the right direction.

And so Paul comes back to defending the idea of his being an apostle. That’s what a lot of chapter 10 is about as well, but there’s some even before that, defending the idea of him being an apostle. Why you should listen to me?

Because Jesus sent me to tell you these things. So even as he’s saying, you should listen because I’m the apostle Paul, he’s saying you should listen because I, as an apostle, am speaking with Jesus’ authority on these issues. To this church where some of the people had taken the message, but some had said, who are you?

And that’s one of the things we do, too, when we know we’re wrong. Instead of continuing to have the argument about the issue, we turn it back on the person. So he said, you know, if you want to ignore me, that’s up to you.

But don’t think I don’t come to you with any authority. And so, having spent most of chapter 10 defending his position as an apostle, and his job really as a spokesman for Christ to the churches, he comes then in chapter 11, verse 1, and says, I wish you would put up with a little foolishness from me. Now, does he mean literal foolishness?

Is Paul putting on those glasses with the nose and the mustache, Groucho Marx glasses? Is he putting those on and doing a comedy routine for the church at Corinth? No.

He said, we’re having to go through this same old foolishness that I go through all the time of who are you, and instead of listening to the message that Jesus has given you, you’d rather talk about who is Paul. So I wish you’d put up with this foolishness for just a little bit so we can get this settled about who I am and why I’m telling you the things I’m telling you. He said, I wish you’d put up with it just a little bit.

And he begins to explain, after he’s explained that he speaks with Jesus’ authority all throughout this book, he comes in chapter 11 and begins to tell them, now that I’m speaking with Jesus’ authority to you, why am I so concerned about what you do, how you do it, and why you do it? So he says in chapter 11, verse 1, I wish you would put up with a little foolishness for me. Yes, do put up with me.

Here’s his explanation, verse 2, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, because I have promised you in marriage to one husband to present a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit which you had not received, or a different gospel which you had not accepted, You put up with it splendidly. And so he presents the idea that not only does he speak with Jesus’ authority as an apostle, but he’s getting on to them for a reason. He’s not trying to ruin the fun of the people at Corinth.

He told them everything they did because it’s his job to watch over them. It’s his job to guard them. He was watching over them basically as if they were a young lady.

And I know some people think these ideas are antiquated, but they may not have daughters if they think that. Sometimes we’ll be out in public and Charla will say, oh my goodness, would you let, and I don’t think she’s being mean. I think she’s actually asking, would you let our daughters out of the house dressed like that?

And more than once I’ve said, and I, you know, if it sounds old fashioned, fine. I am what I am. I’ve said, I wouldn’t let our daughters out of their room dressed like that.

So it’s my job to be a guardian of my daughters. And it’s my wife’s job to be a guardian of our daughters and train them up the right way. By the way, if you say that’s sexist, it’s not.

I wouldn’t let my sons out of the house dressed like that either. So the rules are the same across the board here. All right.

But I’m protective of my daughters. Protective of my sons as well, but I’m protective of my daughters. As a matter of fact, my family thinks I’m joking when there’s been conversation.

Well, when will you let your daughters date? First of all, the oldest is seven. It’s too early to be having that conversation.

But my answer is always the same. They can date when they have their concealed carry permit. So, yeah.

It’s my job to protect them because I know what men can be like, all right? And I also want to raise my sons to not be that kind of man. But Paul was essentially assuming, I may have offended some of y’all, you may not be back.

I care about my daughters, all right? Paul was essentially assuming that kind of posture toward the church at Corinth. He says, God has put me in this position to watch over you because there are all sorts of people that want to take advantage of the church at Corinth.

There are all sorts of people that want to lead the church at Corinth astray. And it is my job to protect you and prepare you so I can present you as a pure bride to one husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s assuming that kind of protective posture over the church. Why am I doing these things?

It’s not to spoil your fun. It’s not to keep you miserable. It’s to protect you.

So to those who were saying, who are you to call us out for our drunken partying at the Lord’s Supper, which he did in 1 Corinthians. Who are you to call us out for all the sexual immorality going on in the church? Who are you to get on your high horse about that?

And he did. Who are you to call us out for the heresies? We’re free people.

We can believe what we want to believe. Who are you to do any of that? I’m the one that God placed here to watch over you.

And as the apostle, that was his job. because he said his job was to present them as a pure bride to Christ, to engage them to one husband so that they would be presented as a pure bride, wholly devoted to Jesus Christ. Now, nobody wants to go to their wedding and exchange vows with somebody that they love dearly only to have that person say, Yeah, I kind of like you. You’re the best option I’ve got on the table right now.

Nobody does that. Maybe I’ll like you tomorrow. Maybe I won’t.

People don’t want to go through that. No, we go into the marriage ideally with the idea that we are devoted to that person and they are devoted to us and nobody else. If I had gone to marry my wife and I’d said in my vows, you know, I vow this to you and you only, except I do have a date tomorrow night, but we’ll see how that goes.

That wouldn’t have worked, would it? No. Paul said, it’s my job to engage you to one husband and present you as a pure bride to him.

In other words, they were supposed to be devoted. The church is supposed to be devoted to Jesus Christ. Now, Paul compares, as I’ve already said, the church to a bride. That’s what we need to understand this morning.

Paul compares the church to a bride because it’s a picture of our devotion to him. It’s a picture of our purity in the midst of the world, and it’s a picture of our devotion to Christ, our wholehearted devotion to him. Now, our purity in the midst of the world.

We were all born sinners, so this is not to say that if you’ve ever sinned, you can no longer be purely devoted to Jesus Christ. Now this is saying from here on out, we were all sinners and Jesus saved every person who’s ever been saved out of their sins. The righteousness we have is because we’ve been cleansed in his blood and we’ve been clothed with his righteousness and he’s the one that makes us pure. So don’t think that just because, well, preacher, you don’t know my past. No, I don’t.

And it doesn’t matter. Once you belong to him, he makes you pure. And we’re supposed to stay pure, not through our good works, but through our devotion to Christ. good works should follow as a result of that.

But we should stay in that relationship with Christ. We should stay committed to him. It’s a picture of our wholehearted devotion to Christ. There again, you might say, you don’t know my past. It doesn’t matter. Some of you have been married maybe multiple times.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t try to be the best husband or wife you can to who you’re married to now, just because things happened in the past. My point there is just because we were once devoted to other things, spiritually speaking, just because we were once devoted to other things doesn’t mean that we don’t come into the marriage to Christ with the commitment of being fully devoted to Him. You know what? That was in the past. All those other things that claim my affection and my allegiance and my devotion, all those things are in the past. They’re under the blood.

And now my devotion belongs to Him and Him alone. Folks, as a church, that should be our position. That should be our aim.

Are we always going to live up to it perfectly? No. But that should be what we shoot for.

We shouldn’t wake up each morning and think, maybe I’ll be devoted to Christ today, maybe I won’t. We’ll just see how the day goes. Again, that’s not going to work in your marriage.

That’s not going to work in your relationship to Christ. No, our goal every day should be total devotion to Jesus. And some people say, well, how does that work? I have work in the morning.

You can be totally devoted to Jesus Christ while you’re at work. You can be totally devoted to Christ as a school teacher. Totally devoted to Christ while you’re delivering auto parts.

You can be totally devoted to Christ while you’re cutting hay. You can be totally devoted to Christ while you’re counseling people. Anything you’re doing, you can be totally devoted to Christ while you’re doing those things.

It’s all in the perspective of our hearts toward Him. So none of this is meant to say, you know, with anybody’s actual marriage, whether it worked out or didn’t work out or mistakes you’ve made in the past, none of this is meant to tear anybody down for those things. All of this is meant to say, look at the ideal of what we all know marriage ought to be like, what God designed marriage to be like, and that is a picture of what our relationship to Christ is supposed to be.

The way when you walk, you see the bride and the groom, and they look at each other for the first time as she’s coming down the aisle or as he goes to get her, and you see that look of pure devotion on each of their faces, that’s supposed to be how we are as a church devoted to Jesus Christ. That He’s our one true love. He’s what matters more to us than anything else. That we’re willing even to put him and his desires and his will ahead of our own.

Because we love him that much. Because we’re devoted to him. Paul compares the church to a bride.

Because I think that’s a perfect picture of how devoted we’re supposed to be to Christ. And how we’re supposed to save ourselves and our devotion only for him. Now there’s a problem with this though. The problem in this is Satan.

Satan would love nothing more than to drive a wedge between the bride and the groom. Satan wants to be loved and worshipped and adored. He knows he can’t overcome God.

He knows where his future is in the lake of fire, but he’s willing to drag as many people as he can with him because he craves that adoration and that affection and that devotion that belongs only to God. And so to satisfy his own desire to be worshipped and to be loved, He’s more than willing to drive a wedge between the bride and the groom. He’s more than willing to try to stick a wedge in there to drive the church away from its devotion to Christ. How do we know that?

Because we see it here in the passage. We see the picture of the serpent in the garden. And we know that serpent to have been none other than Satan himself.

Now he says here, let’s look at verses 3 and 4. He says, But I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, Your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. He said, it’s my job to watch over you with this godly jealousy and prepare you to be one with Christ, to prepare you to be devoted to Christ. He said, but I fear that these other things may creep in. And just like Satan deceived Eve, just like the serpent deceived Eve, that you may be drawn astray away from your devotion to Christ that you’re supposed to have.

He says in verse 4, for if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit which you had not received, or a different gospel which you had not accepted, you put up with it splendidly. He said, I know that there’s cause for concern about these things, because if somebody comes preaching some other Jesus, some other spirit, some other gospel, you think, hey, new ideas, and you go off running. He says, you put up with it splendidly.

And one thing we need to understand about the Greeks is what they thought was novel were new ideas. You know how everybody goes crazy? Not everybody, but lots of people in our society go crazy when Apple releases a new product.

People will camp out waiting to be first in line. Okay, I’ve never done it. I see looks of judgment.

I’ve never done it. I always buy iPhones that are two models behind because they’re cheaper. But people will camp out for the new iPhone.

They’ll camp out for days to be first in line. And sometimes people get trampled. Our society loves new technology and new gadgets.

That’s what’s novel. That’s what people line up for. For the Greeks, if Apple had been around back then, and they said, we’re releasing a new philosophy, we’re releasing I philosophy X on such and such day, the ancient Greeks would have been camped up around the block, camped out around the block, waiting to hear this new idea.

And we see that in the book of Acts, that some of these people wanted to hear more of the gospel, not because they really believed in Jesus, but because it was a new and a novel idea. And these Corinthians, most of them were from a Greek background. So Paul’s saying, you people hear some new idea, some new revelation, some new idea of Jesus, some new spirit, some new this, some new that, and you all go running.

You will go with whoever’s offering you a new idea, so I know that I ought to be worried about this. Why should I be jealous over you with a godly jealousy? Why should I be so concerned?

Because you’re willing to chase after anybody with a new idea. And see, this is how Satan works and how he’ll operate in our midst today, because again, he wants to drive that wedge to separate the bride away from the groom. He will come after us with distractions, these new ideas, and get our minds off of focusing on Jesus and get us focused on other things, just like he could captivate the Corinthians with these new teachings.

He’ll get our minds distracted. He’ll get our minds distracted and get us focusing on everything but Jesus. And some of the things that we worry about as individuals, some of the things that we worry about as a church that really have no bearing on our calling to worship him and serve him and make disciples lead people to him.

Some of the things we worry about are nothing more than distractions that take our time and focus away from Jesus. It’ll come in with distractions, and if that’s not enough, he’ll come in with deception. As he mentions in verse 3, Eve being led astray by the cunning of the serpent.

Satan is really good. He’s really skilled at taking a little bit of truth, mixing it into the lies, and twisting things up where it sounds like it might be right. Just enough where we’ll fall for it.

That’s exactly what he did in the Garden of Eden when he started out by twisting God’s word and undermining Eve’s confidence in what God had said. By the way, that’s the same trick he tried on Jesus. He’s really good at this, but he has a pretty limited bag of tricks.

He tried the same thing on Jesus during his temptation in the wilderness. He quoted scripture at Jesus, but he twisted the meaning. So we’ve got to be careful.

Because as a church, Satan will use every deception, every distraction he can to try to steal our devotion away from Jesus Christ and put it on something else. So if we’re the bride, it’s our job to maintain our love for the groom. It’s our job to maintain our love for the groom.

It’s our job to make sure that every day we get up and we don’t let that devotion fizzle out. I know sometimes this will happen in marriage. I had people come for counseling and say, I just don’t love her anymore.

I don’t feel the same way I used to. And my advice usually is the same. Go back to where you were then and do the things you did back then.

My other go-to answer is love is not a feeling, it’s a commitment. But if you don’t feel the same way you did, maybe it’s because you’re not doing the things you did when you felt that way. We can get into a rut of it’s just all about the kids and who’s going to get dinner and who’s going to clean the house.

We can’t let that happen in our marriages, and we definitely can’t let that happen in our relationship to Christ. We can’t let it get to a point where with Jesus it’s just all business for us. And I’m not saying it’s all about feelings. either, because your feelings will lie to you.

And I think the answer is when we feel like, Jesus, it’s just all dry, it’s all the same, it’s all business day in and day out, my answer usually is to go back and read again and read some more about what He’s done for me and who He is. It’s time to fall in love with Jesus all over again. It’s time to go back and find something that amazes me about Jesus.

It’s time to go back and remember why I was amazed by Jesus in the first place. Get back to that place of devotion to Him. Because He calls us in verse 3 to a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. I’ve already hinted at these things, but there’s a couple things.

There’s many things that we can do to help maintain that love and that devotion, but I’ve outlined a couple for you that I see in this passage. For one, we can stay in the Word. We can stay in the Word learning about Him and learning to understand His truth, because one of the things we see, it uses the example of Eve in verse 3, and her problem, I still maintain, was her lack of familiarity with and confidence in the Word of God.

Because what Satan did was he came to her and said, wait, did God say this? And Satan knew full well what God had said. He was just being a jerk and twisting it around to try to confuse her.

And Eve, not to criticize her too much, and by the way, there’s even more to criticize Adam for, but Eve’s issue was her lack of familiarity with what God had actually said. And so if you start to feel your devotion fading, if you start to get to that place where it’s just all business with Jesus, go back, get into God’s word, do the opposite of what Eve said, of what Eve did, and go back to the word of God. Go back to that foundation.

Stand on the authority of God’s word so you’re not confused, and dig into it to see who Jesus is, to see him again. And the other one that we see in verses one and two is we can stay in the church. I’m not just telling you this because I’m the pastor and it’s good job security for me if y’all keep coming around.

I’m telling you this because it’s true. God set up the church for us to encourage one another and for us to strengthen one another, for us to challenge one another when we need it. And that’s why Paul said, I wish you’d put up with a little foolishness for me.

Put up with me. Do put up with me. He says in verse 2, for I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.

In the church, God designed it for us to watch over each other. God designed it for us to have leaders, not just the pastor, but for there to be leaders in the church who would invest in the people and teach them and correct and, again, encourage and strengthen and challenge. And we all should be doing those things for each other as well.

But there’s safety in numbers. That’s why God designed the church. We don’t see lone ranger Christians in the New Testament because when we get off on our own, sometimes ideas start to pop into our heads.

I’m saying we should be encouraging and challenging. We should be as the book of Proverbs says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. We should be together to watch over each other and bring out the best in each other.

As Paul said, for this church, God put me here to have this godly jealousy over you, to watch over you. Why? So that I could present you as this bride to Christ. So those are two of the, I know that simple Sunday school stuff, but shouldn’t some things be simple?

There’s not some hidden secret formula for staying devoted to Christ. If you stay in His Word and keep coming back to the things that amazed you about Him to begin with, and you keep being around His people and hearing about the things that He’s doing, it’s going to be hard for you to stop loving Christ. It’s going to be hard for you to stop being devoted to Him. So two of the things we can do, stay in His Word and stay in His church. Why?

Because as believers, we have to keep our focus purposely on Christ. We have to do it on purpose. You know, you’re not going to keep your marriage happy by accident. We have to focus on Christ on purpose.

And we have to constantly grow in our love for Him because distractions and deception are easier than we think. Those things that we talked about that Satan will use. Those things are easier than we think.

Because even though we belong to Christ, we still have that sinful nature. It’s like the hymn says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. We all still have that sinful tendency that if we’re not purposely growing in Christ, we’re going to accidentally move in the opposite direction.

And he pointed out in verse 4 how easy it was for him. He said somebody comes with all these other ideas, you put up with it splendidly. You don’t even have to work at it.

You just wander as the natural course of things. You don’t even have to work at wandering. It just comes naturally.

So what we need to understand out of this is that marriage is ultimately a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. That’s not all it is, but it’s a picture. The ideal of marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church.

My love for my wife, but also my need to put in the effort to make sure that devotion is there and that love is still there. My need to do those things should remind me of my relationship as part of the church with our groom, who’s Jesus Christ. I’d go so far as to say whenever I look at my wedding ring, which there are several I wear depending on how much I weigh that week, but whatever ring I wear on this finger, when I look at it, it ought to be a reminder not only of my love for my wife, but of my love for Jesus Christ. Because all of this is a reminder of His love for us and our need to love Him.