Our glorious God and Father, amid the catastrophic
mess, the mess in marriage and the family in our society today, would You have Your
gospel heralded? And we ask this that the marriages and families
represented here might be transformed, beautified. And we ask that Your gospel might go out again
in power for the reformation of Your church and of marriages and of families and for the
glorification of the dear name of Jesus. And in His name we pray it. Amen. Well, it is not going to be news to you to
tell you that the very ideas of marriage and the family are under threat today. Marriage has and is being legally redefined. Cohabiting before marriage has become normal,
even expected. How that cohabiting is different from marriage
is not much more than a big wedding day in the minds of many. And the percentage of children born, born
I stress, not conceived, the percentage of children born out of wedlock in the UK, do
you know the stats? In 1964, 7%; today, 49%. As such, and as the divorce and separation
rates rise, a child born today has a 50-50 chance of living with both birth parents by
the time he or she is 15 years old. One of the other largest pieces of not news
in our society is the precipitous decline in church attendance. And we know about these things. We know about the destruction of marriage
and the family in our society. We know about the church decline, but what
perhaps we have not been sufficiently clear on is how the two go together. For the gospel and the family go hand in hand. You lose the gospel and you lose the rationale
for the family, and that is what we are seeing all around us today. So, what are we to do amidst all this? Well, we could learn a very good deal from
the Reformation. For very quickly, Martin Luther found that
his theological reforms were having a profound impact on marriage and family life in his
time. And so what I want to do now is, first of
all, tell you the story of how the Reformation affected the family. And then having seen the story, I want to
look at the convictions that drove those changes, okay? So first of all, the story, so you can see
what happened. Now, last night we heard of some of the spiritual
darkness before the Reformation. And part of that pre-Reformation darkness
was to do with the family. For when Luther was growing up, marriage and
the family were institutions in crisis, albeit a different crisis to ours today. For what had been growing over centuries was
the idea that the celibate life is superior to the married life. For if you were celibate, it was argued, you're
living the life of the angels, you're living the heavenly life. And so, do you want the spiritual fast track? Don't marry. You want the spiritual fast track? Become a nun. Become a monk. Head to a nunnery. Sorry, to be clear, those are different commands. Not become a monk and head to a nunnery, though
that did happen. But become a monk if you're a man; head to
a nunnery if you're a woman. Now, what in the early church had been voluntary
vows of celibacy had become a meritorious work and a law. And so priests and monks, many of them who
were drifting into clerical life without any great commitment, were compelled into this
life of chastity. The consequence -- they often strayed into
immoral relations, and so you had "become a monk and head to a nunnery." Justification by faith alone smashed through
all this like a pneumatic drill. For if vows of celibacy do not earn you salvific
merit before God, what's the point? Especially if, as the Reformers argued, marriage
is a good institution that glorifies God. And the monasteries and the nunneries started
emptying when this was preached. Now, it wasn't always easy in the early days
of the Reformation, I think. Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer,
he secretly got married when over in Lutheran Germany, but then returned to England, where
it was illegal for priests to be married. So Mrs. C. needed to be kept hidden, and it
was said that he had a large chest with air holes specially made for her so that Mrs.
C. could travel along with him as he went on his tours. So she was a minor martyr of the Reformation,
for at times the box was packed upside down. Now in the earliest days, Luther had snorted,
"How Wittenbergers give wives even to the monks! They will not thrust a wife on me." Oh, yeah? Well, a very few months later in June 1525,
the ex-monk Luther married the ex-nun Katharina von Bora. And Luther confessed, "Suddenly, and while
I was occupied with very different thoughts, the Lord plunged me into marriage." And you can tell from that Luther's marriage
didn't really start with very heartfelt affection, but it was typical Luther. His marriage was an act of iconoclastic destruction
that broke apart false saintliness. "Yes," he said, "my marriage has made the
angels laugh and the devils weep." Because it pressed the issue on his contemporaries,
"Do you really believe that we don't need vows of celibacy to earn merit before God?" And even many on the side of the Reformation
flinched at Luther's marriage, and opponents jumped on it as clear evidence that the Reformers
were really just a bunch of antinomians. They were really just making up doctrines
to give them license to indulge the flesh. And so when Katie Luther got pregnant, oh
can imagine the rumors on the grapevine, "She's pregnant! The spawn of a monk and a nun. It'll be the antichrist or a two-headed monster,"
they said. One wit commented, "If that's what happened
when a nun gives birth to the child of a monk, the world must already be stuffed with antichrists." But when the child was born, it was a healthy
son, Hans. Now while Martin and Katie hadn't started
married life gooey with love, it grew. And that should be great encouragement to
those with cold and functional marriages. With Christ, who loves marriage, there is
hope. And we see Martin's letters to Katie, which
is the best evidence we have really of their relationship with each other. It's the best way we can see it directly. His letters to Katie, they're full of jokes,
clear affection. He'd call her his "Morning Star of Wittenberg." His most beloved text of the New Testament,
Galatians, he called his Katie von Bora, "the old loved one," he used to sign himself off. He wrote, "I would not change my wife for
France or Venice, nor would I take another wife if I were offered a queen." Katie became his anchor. She was the one with whom he could safely
share his stresses, his concerns, his ups, his downs. He would tease her, calling her, "My most
holy, Mrs. Doctor." He would talk with her about his latest theological
battles. When away, he'd write letters. He'd ask about the kids and give all the exciting
latest about his bowel movements. And he would look after her physically and
spiritually. He would encourage her to read the Scriptures. He even resorted to trying to bribe her to
read the Scriptures. And in the face of her quite regular stressing,
he once wrote this to her. He said, "Katie, I'm afraid if you don't stop
worrying, we shall be swallowed up by the earth. Is this what you learned from the Catechism? Pray! And let God do the worrying." And he looked after her with great respect. Others who saw them were uncomfortable that
a woman should be allowed to join in the theological table talk they had round dinner at their
house, but Luther appreciated her input. And you can see why from the words she said
on her deathbed. Katie said as she lay dying, "I will stick
to Christ like a bur to a topcoat." What a woman! She grasped the gospel so clearly. And do you know, perhaps most revealing of
all is a painting by the great Lucas Cranach the Elder, and it's probably, it's the best-known
portrait of Martin Luther, but here's the interesting bit. That famous portrait of Luther is actually
part of a double image. Martin on one side, Katie on the other, and
it's hinged so they filled in on each other. And it makes a profound statement about the
importance of Luther's marriage and the household that sprang from it. It was an embodiment of his theology. And what I want to see now is why. Why was that the case? Why was Luther's marriage and his family so
precious to all that he stood for as a Reformer? Why was Luther so eager to let the world see
that he was a devoted husband and father? Well, we know one thing. We know he wanted to smash the idea that any
vows of celibacy could add to our righteousness, but there was a good deal more than that. There was something else that justification
by faith alone did. It forced the Reformers to ask, "If our works
are not done to earn salvation, why are so many good works prescribed in Scripture?" "Well," said Luther, "clearly God doesn't
need our good works. He's not in need. Clearly instead, good works display the character
of God to the world. They are done to serve and bless our neighbor." And so instead of doing good works for God,
we have good from God, and this good from God is meant then to flow out to others. It means that instead of thinking that good
works are otherworldly acts taking us out of the world, things like monastic life, vows
of celibacy, no, the gospel drives us into the world to serve others in love. And in fact, argued Luther, what makes a good
deed good is faith. It's not about the external form; it's about
the heart and the faith that is there. Faith is what pleases God, and that means
if that's the case, the best place to do good works isn't a monastery or a nunnery. I can do good deeds anywhere, because I can
have faith anywhere and with that, the context in which one could serve God had widened from
the cloister and the cell to the world. I can glorify God in all of life. See, in medieval Roman Catholicism, God is
in the monastery, not the marketplace. He's in the Mass, not the home. For Luther and the Reformers, you do not need
to leave the world and go to a monastery to serve God. You live all of life Coram Deo, before the
face of God. And that means we can glorify God in all our
life, not just in church; at home, as husbands love their wives, as mothers care for their
children, in even the little and menial things the faithful glorify God. And it's not that the pastor necessarily glorifies
God any more than the mother changing her baby's nappy, or diaper for American friends. I think I got that right. There is no hierarchy of calling in God's
sight. What counts is faith. You could be a faithful mother and an unfaithful
pastor. And when it comes to marriage and the family,
that's exactly what we see in Scripture said the Reformers. There is nothing in the New Testament requiring
we abandon marriage for clerical celibacy. In the beginning, God ordained marriage as
a good and holy state, which is why 1 Timothy, sorry 1st Timothy 3 Paul stipulates an overseer
should be the husband of one wife with well-behaved, obedient children -- not clerical celibacy. But the sledgehammer text the Reformers used
was 1 Timothy chapter 4. Come with me to 1 Timothy or First Timothy
chapter 4. "Now," says Paul in verse 1, "the Spirit expressly
says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful
spirits and the teaching of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences
are seared, who" hello, "forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created
to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God (including marriage)
is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is
made holy by the word of God and prayer." Okay, so justification by faith alone, return
to the teaching of Scriptures, greatly promoted marriage and the family. But there was something even more and extremely
powerful. The Reformers believed the gospel they recovered
would promote marriage and a familial society because of the very nature of the gospel. So think first of all about where the gospel
has its roots. The gospel has its roots in God the Father's
eternal covenant with His Son. Eternally, the Father so delighted in His
Son that He willed His Son might be the firstborn among many. Romans 8 verse 29, "For those he foreknew
he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be
the firstborn among many brothers." And so the very foundations of the gospel,
because of the nature of our God, are familial, which is why the supreme benefit of salvation
is adoption because God the Father desired not simply to have a community of citizens
under His rulership; He chose to have a stable and loving family. That would reveal who He is. His faithful nature, His generosity are such
that He chose not mere servants who might get flicked off when their performance dipped. He chose children, children who might never
be snatched out of His hand. And that is why when our culture turned its
back on Christ, it lost the committed love and stability it still longs for. Because with Christ is the only rationale
for committed love and stability. There's the roots of the gospel, but then
the Reformers saw it's not just the roots and foundations of the gospel that are familial
and therefore productive of a healthy family life, the very enacting of that eternal plan
of the Father's meant a love story. The story of a bride and bridegroom, the story
in which Christ the bridegroom comes to win his bride the church. We've seen it already from the very beginning
of the Reformation. That early tract of Luther's, where he describes
how the king marries that poor girl, and they enjoy that wonderful exchange. From that moment, the Reformers saw marriage
as a central picture for understanding the gospel well. And indeed, they're seeing this isn't just
because it's convenient to us with our theology, the grand story of Scripture begins and ends
with weddings. Genesis 2:22, "The Lord God made a woman,
brought her to the man. The man said, 'This at last is bone of my
bones, flesh of my flesh.' And she shall be called 'woman' because she
was taken out of man, and therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be united
to his wife and they shall become one flesh," a union. And Adam, Paul tells us in Romans 5 verse
14, "Adam was a pattern, or type, or picture of the One to come, the last Adam," which
is why, because he saw Adam as a pattern of the last Adam, he can quote Genesis 2:24 in
Ephesians 5 and say, "This mystery is profound, but I'm talking about Christ and the church,"
which takes us to the very end of all things. At the beginning, we saw the wedding of Adam
and Eve. In Revelation 19 the wedding of the Lamb has
come, and His bride has made herself ready. In Revelation 21 John writes, "Then I saw
the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride
beautifully dressed for her husband." And the Reformers didn't have to look hard
elsewhere either. Hosea, Song of Songs, whole books of the Bible,
they saw dedicated to unpacking the truth, that as Isaiah puts it, "Your Maker is your
Husband." They saw the prophets often look back on,
say, Exodus as a moment where we see the Lord's rescue of His bride, that's Ezekiel 16. That the people's faithfulness is routinely
described as adultery, a marital problem. And the Reformers and their heirs found this
so helpful for understanding our union with Christ that they routinely turned to it when
pastoring believers. So here's an example from the 17th century
work The Marrow of Modern Divinity, imagining a wise pastor speaking to a shaky, doubt-filled
young Christian. Here's the advice, "The marriage union between
Christ and you, young believer, is more than a bare notion or apprehension of your mind. It is a special, spiritual, and real union,"
and get the payload now, "Whence it must needs follow, you cannot be condemned, except Christ
be condemned with you. Neither can Christ be saved except you be
saved with Him. For when Christ has married His spouse to
Himself, He passes all His estate to her, so that whatsoever Christ is or has, believer,
you may boldly challenge as your own." Or here is a bit from good old Richard Sibbes
just a few years later. Sibbes said, "Let us often think of this nearness
between Christ and us, if we've given our names to Him, and not be ultimately discouraged
for any sin or unworthiness in us. For who sues a wife for debt when she's married? Therefore, answer all accusations like this,
'Go to Christ.' If you have anything to say to me, go to my
Husband. You don't sue a wife for debt. Go to her husband." And what the Reformers show in these ways
through Scripture is that the gospel gives marriage its logic, and it is the only thing
that gives marriage its full logic, which is why when you lose the gospel in a society,
the institution of marriage will start to fall apart, as we see all around us. And there are two things in this grand story
of Christ, the bridegroom. Two things our culture longs for and yet keeps
running away from in its blind ignorance, true love and faithfulness. In Christ we see a perfect bridegroom who
has no secret agenda to use His beloved, to take from her. Here's a bridegroom that is not lacking or
needy. He loves out of a superfluence, an overflow
of goodness, as we see supremely in His self-giving on the cross. That is His attitude to her. From heaven He came and sought her to be His
holy bride. With His own blood He bought her, and for
her life He died, and with that blood He betroths His people with an everlasting covenant. Would you come with me to Isaiah 62 to see
some more of this? Now Isaiah 62, to understand this, we're just
going to look briefly at some of these early verses. You need to see who is speaking here, and
it's part of a speech that's been going on for a bit. Isaiah 61 verse 1, we see who's speaking,
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me," hello. This is the anointed One, the Messiah, the
Christ speaking. The anointed One is speaking and He says,
now come to Isaiah 62 verse 1, "For Zion's sake," that's for His bride in other words,
Zion, Jerusalem, representing His people. "For her sake I will not keep silent. For Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet,
until her (here you see) righteousness goes forth as brightness, her salvation as a burning
torch." You see what a bridegroom. Here's a bridegroom who will not rest, who
will not stop until His bride is glorified. And do you see how proud of her He is? He wants her to be an object of wonder for
all the nations, all the world to see her beauty. Do you see verses 1 and 2, "brightness," "a
burning torch," "glory." He wants her to be a second sun in the sky. In fact, verse 3, verse 3, "You shall be a
crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God." This is how He sees her. Proverbs 12 verse 4 says, "An excellent wife
is the crown of her husband." The church is the excellent wife, the crown
of Jesus Christ. The church is His most precious treasure. Then verse 4, "You shall no more be termed
Forsaken, your land shall no more be termed Desolate. You will be called My Delight Is in Her, for
the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God
rejoice over you." This is a love beyond the dreams of Disney
and every aching heart out there, and it is only this gospel that has the ability to create
human marriages of true love and faithfulness. It is only the preaching of this gospel that
can create healthy marriages that reflect the relationship between Christ, the bridegroom,
and His bride, the church. Only this gospel can create those marriages,
marriages that will then embody this gospel to the world and depict it. Friends, in our broken culture of self-gratification,
of faithlessness, of using each other, the heirs of the Reformation have the key. We can tell the world of our loving Father
and of Christ, the bridegroom. And it's not only those who are married. This is not just for them. Those who are single can equally preach and
adorn this gospel, honoring families as a good institution of God's, not blurring marriages
with fickle, faithless promiscuity. Christian singles, knowing that human marriages
are only copies of the great romance, they can show the world by their lack of desperation
that no other spouse, only Christ can fulfill our deepest longings. And there is a great challenge here for those
of us who are married, because the problems aren't just out there. The failure of couples in the church to reflect
Christ and the church is damaging our witness. Christian husbands hurting their wives with
functional, contractual, heartless relating, their hearts more drawn to their jobs or their
hobbies than their wives. Christian wives crushing the husbands with
their nagging, and there will be some here, and you're constantly fighting at home and
perhaps even in this room, faithless or abusive relationships. There is hope in Christ. If that is you, repent and turn to Christ
now. If you stray from Christ, your marriage will
suffer. Turn to Christ, and He can mend even after
years of neglect. And He can make truly affectionate love and
faithfulness blossom. Friends, repent. Turn to Christ. Let's honor this gospel with our lives. And friends, this gospel will prevail. And before long, having got all ready, our
great Bridegroom will return. He will return, and history will end with
His wedding supper. And at that banquet, He will swallow up death
forever. "Behold, I am coming soon," promises the bridegroom. And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Let's pray. Our Father, we praise You for this glorious
gospel, Your fatherly intent to have many children. We praise You for Your great Son, the Bridegroom
laying down His all in delighted sacrificial love for His bride. May this gospel go out again and transform
again, and first of all transform our marriages, our families, our lives. And so may we preach this gospel faithfully
to all the world and adorn it with our lives. And may the world see through healthy, affectionate,
loving marriages and families that the gospel only of Jesus Christ is the key we need. And so, may His great name be glorified. Amen.
