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The Wake-Up Call
Why Love Is Blind but Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 3 of 3)
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Christian marriage serves as a type of everyday temple where Christ reveals himself through the sacrificial love of husband and wife.
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Good morning. Rise and shine and give God the glory. It is Wednesday, May 13th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. Beginning this day in consecration we come to meet with Jesus. And good news gang. He has come to meet with us. He's here. Wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today's entry. This is part three of three, three part miniseries. The whole series we entitled why Love is Blind and marriage is an eye opener. And you'll remember that's what the preacher, a friend of mine said to me on the eve of my marriage. And yeah, you know, this whole, this whole series has me sad that my marriage did not make it. I've grieved it, I've processed it. Was married for actually 25 years and the first 15 of those years were just really great. I felt like even those thinking on the journal questions yesterday how our marriage, I felt like did reflect resplendence. And then let's just say a lot of things happened that I believe it was the enemy. I don't even blame my former spouse. I don't not even going to go there. But I'm grieved at the fact that it happened that it, you know, 10 years of profound difficulty and struggle and suffering and ultimately ending in the death of the marriage. So don't mean to be a downer and I know a lot of you have been through this, some of you are going through it and I'm praying the Lord can, can save that. But let's finish the series. I'm not crying. You're crying. But let's finish the series before I start crying. All right, you ready? Our text, Ephesians 5, verses 31 to 33. Hear now the word of the Lord. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. The word of the Lord. Now consider this four times the Bible gives us these. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. Genesis 2:24 offers it in the context of the creation of the world and the joining of Adam and Eve. Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:7,8 share the text in the setting of Jesus response to the Pharisees questioning him about divorce. And of course Paul shares the words with the Ephesians for this reason, for this reason, for this reason only. It never explicitly tells us the reason, and given the unique context of each setting, I'm going to take a crack at it. The reason In Genesis chapter one the reason for marriage strikes me as vocational. The vocation is to oversee, steward, care for and further populate the whole creation. While that would not be unique to married couples today, it should remain as a clear purpose of the institution, two image bearers of God becoming one flesh by serving one visionary purpose. In Matthew 19 and Mark 10 the reason for marriage strikes me as transformational. After citing the text at hand, Jesus responded to their point about Moses permitting divorce. He said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. Marriage is a crucible of sorts, which is a container made to withstand great heat for the purpose of melting and forging precious metals. It's why marriage is not contractual. But covenantal contracts are written with language anticipating breach. Not so with covenants which biblically speaking, are sealed in terms of life and death. It's especially interesting when you consider that the word crucible comes from the Latin word crux which means cross. God intends marriage to be a place where hardness of heart and any number of character flaws and defects might be brought to the surface and skimmed away like dross. Two image bearers of God becoming one flesh by becoming one heart. I propose the reason given for Marriage in Ephesians 5 is doxological. Christian marriage is meant to give glory to God. Doxology is a fancy word for worship. It takes place when revelation inspires response. Here's the word. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church. The revelation of Christ inspires a response of worship from the church. Christian marriage serves as a type of everyday temple where Christ reveals himself through the sacrificial love of husband and wife. As couples offer themselves up to God for the blessing and benefit of the other, the world witnesses something of the splendor of holiness. It's amazing how expressions of lower archy inspire awe in those who behold Jesus. Washing his disciples feet offers a fitting example. All these years later and we still can't stop talking about it. Two image bearers of God becoming one flesh by becoming of one mind. The mind of Christ. Maybe you've seen the billboards around the country that contain messages from God. In white letters across a black background, they say things like, I miss how you used to talk to me when you were a kid. God. And if you must curse, use your own name. God. But my all time favorite is the one that says loved the wedding. Invite me to the marriage, God. Something about a wedding where you know Jesus has been invited to the marriage gladdens the heart of everyone around. Something about it sets the world right again. Almost like a Genesis reset. Marriage figures prominently in the plan of God. The world began with a wedding where our eyes were opened to the image of God. Jesus. First miracle happened at a wedding where our eyes were first opened to the Son of God. The world will end with a wedding where our eyes will be opened to the ultimate glory of God. The wedding of the Lamb, as the hymn writer Horatio Spafford has it in the great hymn when peace like a river, it is well with my soul, you'll recognize it. He sings. And Lord, haste the day when my
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faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
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the trump
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shall resound and the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul.
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I think I know what we're singing today. Love is blind, but marriage is an eye opener. Let's pray. Abba Father, we thank you for your son Jesus, who has loved us beyond our capacity to comprehend. We pray for more marriages through which we might behold the glory of God, married or not. Awaken us to your purposes for marriage. And I just want to continue praying for, for those of you who are married, for grace, for mercy, for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to be poured out on you that you might know Jesus better. And I just want to pray. I sense there are a lot of couples out there who they're equally yoked in faith in Jesus, but they've never been really yoked together in their faith. And that's my prayer for you. That you would begin to be drawn together in your faith in Jesus like you never have been before and begin to walk together in that yoke with Jesus together. You've kind of been independent, you've been faithful, you've been good. But he's wanting, I think in this next season to draw you together in him like never before because of what he wants to do through you and for you and for your family, for the world. And then there's yeah, we could. We could just have an entire hour of prayer here for marriage. I feel like that'd be a good thing to do. Just want to bless marriages today. Pray the Lord would open our eyes. All in Jesus name, All for your glory, all for others gain. All for our good. Amen. Journal prompts today, which of the three reasons, as in for this reason that I've outlined here, the. Which of those three reasons most resonates with you? I think if I can remember them right, one is for the reason of, I don't know, I can't remember you. You go look them up. You got it right in front of you. Number two, which of the three reasons most challenges you? And then whose marriages will you seek to encourage in the coming days? You know, couples that are struggling, just set aside a season and begin to pray for them. Just begin to speak God's word over them. Begin to prophesy renewal and healing and blessing. Well, it's time to sing, and Dad's here today, thank God. We're going to sing that great hymn. It is well with my soul. All right, so I thought dad was going to be with me today, but that didn't work out for this one. But good news, he will be with us tomorrow and through the weekend. So we got that to look forward to. You ready? I was thinking that maybe, you know, given we've talked about doxology and worship, you know, wouldn't it be a great thing to have a marriage that inspired people to want to worship God, that they saw that God was revealed, that the love of God in Jesus Christ was revealed through someone's marriage? You know, I opened this series talking about the. Just the pain of my own broken marriage and all that happened there. But, you know, there were. We were married 25 years, and 15 of those years were amazing and many doxological moments. Worship, like goodness, love, joy, peace, and the Holy Spirit. And so much of it was just, you know, really stolen by the devil. And we're coming up on spiritual warfare. It's interesting that that comes after we talk about marriage in Ephesians, but I'm so convinced that's what happened. But, yeah, that's. I thought, why not? Why don't we sing a doxology today? We'll sing it through twice. We're going to sing old 100th, if you want. If you need the hymnal, it's number 682. Yeah, let's. Let's just go with that. And let me say this, you know, in closing, this little miniseries on Marriage. I don't wish to reflect poorly at all on my former wife. I don't even like to call her an ex wife. I don't even like to sort of put the X there. I don't want to ex her out. She's. She is a daughter of God, and she's doing her best, and I sure don't want to reflect poorly on her. I only want good and the best for her. And by God's mercy, I think we're both healing from it. And you get through the. You get through the ordeal, and then you get over it. And I've had many of you write me with words of your own pain and your own story of divorce. And I just want you to know, I see you. I feel like you see me. And this is one of those things that it is not God's best. And yet at times, it is a sad inevitability. And so we just have to pick up the pieces of the broken puzzle and do our best to press on. Yeah. You know, at one point in that journey, I don't know, I'm led to just tell you the story. My former wife was in a rehab center. And that's. That's no secret. That's no breach of confidentiality. It was widely and well known, and there's no shame in that. Of course. I don't mean to imply that, but she was. She was in that place. And I had these four young children, and one of the things we did, this happened was. Was in the holiday season of that year, we got a puzzle, and we put. Over days, we put that, like, 500 pieces. It was a challenge. All four of them got involved. We put that puzzle together, and I. As we got near the end of it, one of the kids had the idea, and I thought it was brilliant. They said, why don't we hold out one piece of this puzzle and why don't we send it to mom to know so that she can put this piece back in the puzzle when she gets back home? And, you know, we put that puzzle. We pulled that piece right out of the very middle. We put it into an envelope, we all wrote letters, sealed it up, and mailed it to her in that recovery center. And I think it was a real blessing to her to. To bring that piece home and to put it in that puzzle because it was not complete without her. Yeah. So wanted you to know that little piece of the story. And it's amazing how God can heal things and recover and restore things, and it's still an unfinished story. That's continuing to unfold. So let's sing Praise God from whom
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all blessings flow Praise him all creatures here below Praise him above, ye heavenly host Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
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Let's just, I just want to encourage you. Let's sing it again. For a lot of you out there, there's pain in the offering, and that's why it's called a sacrifice of praise. There's sometimes there's nothing in it for us, but we just sing it out unto the Lord. That's doxology. It really is all about him. That's what this song is.
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Praise God from whom all bless flow Praise him all creatures here below Praise him above, ye heavenly host Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Amen. Well, quick one here. Before we go, we've got a. We have a. A webinar. They're calling it a webinar, but it's. I recently released. I know we hadn't said a word about it, and I'm deeply sad about that, but maybe we can fix it. You remember a few years back we did Exodus, maybe a couple years back, Exodus on the wake up call. Well, Zondervan HarperCollins publisher has released that whole series, Exodus. And this Thursday, I'm going to get online with my dear friend Sandra Richter of Epic of Eden fame, and we're going to talk through Exodus. It's going to be 3 o' clock Eastern, 2 o' clock Central this coming Thursday. And we'll put the link in the email and in the show notes of the other platforms, but would love for you to join us for that. And I'll figure out how to share it later if it's recorded. Anyway, we gotta get the field. It's Wednesday. We just got over the hump. Okay. For The Awakening, I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you on the field. Sam.