The Richness of a God-Honoring Marriage | One Flesh (Part 4)

Transcript

JRS 87
07/26/2026
One Flesh: The Richness of a God-Honoring Marriage
Selected Scriptures
Jesse Randolph


This morning we are winding down our brief little mini-series on marriage, One Flesh. We've considered the roots of a God-honoring marriage, that's from that first message where we looked at Genesis 1:2 and the foundations of marriage established there. We considered the requirements of a God-honoring marriage, namely that it be salvation founded and Spirit filled. Last week we worked through the roles in a God-honoring marriage where we worked through 24 ways, 12 for the husband and 12 for the wife, through which spouses are called to fulfill their respective roles in marriage. And this morning in part four of this series we're going to look at the richness of a God-honoring marriage. You know we've covered many of the bedrock Biblical principles pertaining to marriage over the past three weeks and this morning we're going to get into some additional Biblical truths which highlight the joys, the difficulties, the complexities, sometimes the complications, sometimes the hurts, and overall, the richness of a God-honoring marriage. How we are going to work our way through this topic this morning, through this final topic, The Richness of a God-Honoring Marriage, is through an illustration, through a picture, and the illustration of a bed. I said it the way I said it—a bed, B-E-D, the thing you slept on last night, the thing you'll likely sleep on tonight. We're going to use the bed as a picture of the various stages and dimensions and aspects of marriage. We're going to use the bed as the framework through which we consider the richness of a God-honoring marriage.

Samuel Johnson was a 19th century English poet and author who wrote “In bed we laugh, in bed we cry. And born in bed, in bed we die.” Johnson was right. If we really stop to think about it once we add it all up it's clear that no matter how active or busy our lives once were, we do spend a significant portion of our lives in bed. What Johnson's words, as he mentions laughing and crying and being born and dying, what those words, I think, do is they serve as a useful picture of the variety and diversity of the types of experiences that Christian husbands and Christian wives will go through in a God-honoring marriage. Let's consider this one first, as we work through the topic of The Richness of a God-Honoring Marriage. If you are taking notes, this is point one, this will be the Richness of the Marriage Bed. Hebrews 13:4 says this, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all.” Prayerfully that is what we've been doing throughout this series, is honoring marriage. Hopefully what each of us is doing who are married is living out this way, honoring marriage in our respective marriages, holding it in honor, revering it, enjoying, respecting it as the very good gift which God has blessed us with.

Well, the next part of that passage, Hebrews 13:4, says, “And the marriage bed is to be undefiled,” meaning the marriage bed is to be protected, kept pure, reserved for a husband and a wife. So even though sex outside of marriage has been normalized in the world as the sea of perversion in which we live sloshes all around us, God's Word teaches an entirely different ethic. The Bible teaches that the marriage bed is to be, Hebrews 13:4, “undefiled.” The gift of sex is to be reserved to a husband and a wife alone, not to a husband and a woman who is not his wife, not to a wife and a man who is not her husband, not to a boyfriend and a girlfriend, not to a cohabiting couple, not to a man and another man, not to a woman and another woman. No, God gave the gift of sexual intimacy to husbands and to wives to be enjoyed only by them together. That is an important word I just used—enjoyed. Part of the richness of a God-honoring marriage, one of the many good gifts that God has given to husbands and wives is their enjoyment, their physical enjoyment of one another.

Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Proverbs 5. Proverbs 5 and Proverbs 7 both have many different warnings about sexual immorality and sexual impropriety, but Proverbs 5:15, includes some language about the gift of sexual intimacy within marriage. We'll look at Proverbs 5:15, we'll start here. It says “Drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well. Should your springs be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for you alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and be glad in the wife of your youth. As a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be intoxicated always with her love.” Just think of that, the Scriptures in other settings warn clearly against the dangers of intoxication and drunkenness. Proverbs 23:31 says “Do not look on the wine when it glistens red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly at the end. Like a serpent it bites, like a viper it stings. Your eyes will see strange things and your heart will speak perverse things.” Then in the New Testament, Ephesians 5:18, we're told “Do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation.” But when it comes to sexual intimacy with one's spouse what do the Scriptures teach? Drink up, have your fill. In the words of Proverbs 5:19, speaking to the husband, “be intoxicated always with her love.” See, sex is a gift and it's a delight which married couples are to treasure. It is a divinely given gift which married couples are to open with regularity within the sacred and secure bonds of the marriage covenant.

Turn with me, if you would, over in your Bibles to Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs where we have these vivid depictions of sex being experienced between a husband and a wife. Now the human author of the Old Testament book of Song of Songs or Song of Solomon was Solomon, the son of David, the last king over a unified Israel before it divided. This book is this poetic expression of love and courtship and marriage and sexual intimacy within the context of marriage. In fact, if you went back to our 2024 marriage conference, it was titled “Beloved,” and I did an entire exposition of all eight chapters of Song of Solomon. But for today I just want to point out a couple of passages from this book, starting in Song of Solomon 7. Song of Solomon 7 highlights the richness and delights of the marriage bed here from the husband's perspective. Song of Solomon 7:1, it reads, “How beautiful are your feet in sandals, oh noble's daughter. The curves of your thighs are like ornaments, the work of the hands of an artist. Your navel is like a round basin which never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is like a heap of wheat encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like a tower of ivory, your eyes like the pools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon which faces toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Carmel and the flowing locks of your head are like purple threads, the king is captivated by your tresses. How beautiful and how pleasant you are, my love, with all your pleasures. Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I said, I will climb the palm tree, I will seize its fruit stalks. Oh, may your breasts be like the clusters of the vine and the fragrance of your breath like apples and your mouth like the best wine. It goes down smoothly for my beloved, flowing gently through the lips of those who fall asleep.”

Now no doubt the language I just read to you is a product of its time, meaning it would be a rare husband these days who would use these words verbatim with his wife as he describes her belly as being like a heap of wheat or her neck being like an ivory tower or her breath smelling like apples. But what each of these expressions do is point us to something that is happening in the heart of this husband, Solomon, in this context. It's pointing to something that was good and noble and godly and God-ordained that was happening in Solomon's heart in this context. Solomon very clearly saw his bride as perfect to him; to him his bride was the work of this master craftsman. He is describing his bride in terms that are completely complimentary and uniformly complimentary. Who knows? She might not have had what society would consider the perfect body. We'll never know that, but ultimately it didn't matter because in the eyes of her husband, her beloved, Solomon, she was perfect.

Now putting that into our modern-day context this man wasn't measuring the beauty of his wife against some woman he had seen on the magazine rack, he wasn't measuring the beauty of his wife by some image of a woman he saw as he scrolled through his phone. Rather his very definition of beauty was centered on his wife—her form, her loveliness and the loving relationship he had with her. He was overtaken by her, he was consumed by her, she intoxicated him. It's a beautiful picture of Proverbs 5:18 of “delighting in the wife of your youth.” That's an important and timely reminder for any husband here this morning. You know the world is continually throwing image after image at us men, creating in our minds these fictional fantasies, these airbrushed AI-generated images of so-called feminine beauty. Now what we see here in the Song of Solomon is that God wants husbands to define beauty by no other standard than the beauty of his bride. The more a husband views his wife through the lens of knowing that God created her entirely to satisfy him, the less he is going to be tempted to look elsewhere for satisfaction. So, if you are a husband here this morning and you struggle with measuring your wife against some other standard of some other woman who is not your wife, what you need to do is ask God to work. To work in your heart and work in your mind and ask Him to help you see your bride the way you are supposed to see her, which is perfect for you and beautiful to you. Even as we see here from Solomon, intoxicating.

It is not only the husband's perspective that we see portrayed here in the Song of Solomon, but also the wife's. Turn over with me back to Song of Solomon chapter 5 and we're going to see these words coming from the bride now in verse 10. Song of Solomon 5:10, she says, “My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, lifted up as a banner among ten thousand. His head like gold, fine gold, his locks are like clusters of dates and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, washed in milk and sitting in their setting. His cheeks are like a bed of spices, towers of sweet, scented herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping with liquid myrrh. His hands are rods of gold set with beryl, his abdomen is a plate of ivory inlaid with sapphires, his legs are pillars of marble set on bases of fine gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His mouth is full of sweetness and he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, oh daughters of Jerusalem.”

Now just as modern-day Christian husbands probably aren't quoting Song of Solomon 7 verbatim back to their wives, the same goes for wives quoting Song of Solomon 5 to their husbands. And that's all well and good, but there is a main idea being communicated here and it's in how this wife perceives her husband, and how this wife perceives her husband runs in parallel with how the husband perceives his wife. The main idea again is this, to her he is perfect. That's it. To her he is perfect, he is her perfect match. She is delighting very clearly here in his physical appearance. In verse 10 she calls him “dazzling and ruddy.” We don't often hear those terms used today in modern vernacular, but what this is saying is he is handsome. That's a fair modern counterpart to these words. He is a handsome guy. She also says his head is like “pure gold,” he has striking eyes, he has nice cheekbones. This is a good-looking man. Now also according to this bride, in her eyes it's not just his face that is pleasant to take in, he is perfectly built. She speaks of his arms as being strong, she speaks of his core as though it is made of polished ivory, she speaks of his legs as though they are these pillars. This is a young, fit, and likely still teenage age Solomon she is describing here.

Now, speaking from experience, as one who is no longer in his teens, I'm pretty sure that Solomon didn't still look this way in his 40s. I'm even more sure he didn't look this way in his 50s or in his 60s. But what Solomon objectively looked like isn't actually what mattered to his wife, it actually isn't the point of what she is expressing here. Rather, the point is how she perceived him. What we see here is she is portraying him in the same way that he portrayed her. She is elevating her beloved, her husband, to this place of being in her mind and in her eyes the very standard of what is attractive. That really comes through in verse 10 where this young bride describes her husband, after she calls him dazzling and ruddy, she uses this expression “lifted uas a banner among ten thousand.” This can be lost if you just read it through quickly, but this is a very beautiful expression. What she is saying here is that her husband is so amazing to her, she is so enraptured with him that if she had her choice of ten thousand men, she would pick him every single time. That's the meaning of the expression. No matter what, if he starts to lose the six-pack, if he starts to lose his hair, if he starts to lose his strength and his vitality, she will always choose him. He is still her man; he is always going to be her man. This is a tremendous picture of spousal love and spousal loyalty.

Look at this wife's description of her husband down in verse 16 where she says he is “wholly desirable.” He is wholly desirable. You know oftentimes when we are teaching on sex in marriage it can come across, if we are not careful, as being only about being this dry duty. In one sense I have to say that's understandable because the word duty is actually used in the go-to text for most preachers when they are teaching on sex and marriage, that text being I Corinthians 7. Paul says in I Corinthians 7:1, “Now concerning the things which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of sexual immoralities each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.” And then hear this, “The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise, also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” Then he says, “stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” Now those are commands in I Corinthians 7. “The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband. Stop depriving one another,” Paul says. Those are commands from God's Word so the buck, in one sense, stops right there. Husbands and wives must fulfill that duty to one another. But let's not lose sight of the fact also that according to God's design sex in marriage is not merely a duty, but it is a gift from God to husbands and to wives. It's something to delight in, to be with a spouse in that way, the spouse that God has paired you with. You know Solomon, as we were looking through Song of Solomon in chapters 5 and 7, Solomon wasn't saying, Well I guess we must do this. Right? Solomon wasn't saying, I suppose we should do this. Rather in chapter 7 verse 6 he says, “How beautiful and how pleasant you are, my love, with all your pleasures.” Solomon's bride didn't say to him, It's been a while, I guess it's time. Or just to get him off my back I suppose we should be doing this right about now. No, she says, “He is wholly desirable.”

See, sexual intimacy between spouses is to be a normal regular part of the flow of normal life as husband and wife, not only because you must partake, I Corinthians 7, but because you get to partake. You get to partake with the one whom God has providentially paired you with and you get to do so, I Corinthians 6:20, for God's glory. “For you are bought with a price,” Paul says there, “therefore glorify God in your body.” See, the couples who hold the marriage bed in the highest honor, going back to Hebrews 13, are those who are enthralled with God first, Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord,” and then with each other second, “Delight yourself in the wife of your youth.” And so, they seek to worship the Lord their God with all their hearts and their minds and their souls and then their bodies come together often, too. Not only on their wedding night, not only in the early years, not only when things are fun and everybody is vibrant and youthful, but for the rest of their lives.

That was our first one. We've just considered the marriage bed as one dimension of the richness of experiences which God affords to husbands and to wives in a God-honoring marriage. Here is our next one, here is our second point if you are a note taker, The Richness of the Bunk Bed. You heard that right, The Richness of the Bunk Bed, as in the richness of that phase of marriage where for most a husband and a wife are given the immense God-given privilege of raising, nurturing, training children in the safety and the confines of a God-honoring marriage. To get us started on this one let's go over to Psalm 127, we'll read through the whole thing for the context, it's just five verses. Psalm 127 begins with the superscription, “A Song of Ascents of Solomon,” we're back to Solomon here. Psalm 127:1, it reads, “Unless Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless Yahweh watches the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early, that you sit out late, oh you who eat the bread of painful labors. For in this manner, He gives sleep to His beloved.” Now get this, verse 3, “Behold children are an inheritance of Yahweh, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them, they will not be ashamed when they speak with enemies in the gate.” Children are a heritage from the Lord; children are a gift from the Lord. Children aren't some sort of fallback option for when a married couple gets tired of traveling the world, just the two of them. Children are not Plan B for when the husband and the wife finally get tired of sowing their wild oats. No, children are God's Plan A for a marriage. God designed that “a man would leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife,” Genesis 2:24, “and the two would become one flesh.” God designed that as those two became one as husband and wife they would add more to their household, they would procreate, they would add children. That reality goes all the way back to the creation order in Genesis 1:28 where Moses says, “God blessed them,” meaning the first married couple, Adam and Eve. And then it says, “And God said to them. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Later in the book of Genesis there is a reason that Abraham and Sarah desired a child, there is a reason that Rebekah desired a child, there is a reason that Rachel desired a child. When you get to the book of I Samuel and there is a reason that Hannah desired a child. In the New Testament there is a reason that Elizabeth desired a child. It is Psalm 127:3, “Children are an inheritance of Yahweh, the fruit of the womb is a reward.”

A reward for what? Well actually it's a reward and children are a reward for fearing the Lord. That comes out in the very next psalm here in the Psalter, look at Psalm 128. The theme of Psalm 128 is the fear of the Lord. We have this non-inspired language, this heading right between Psalm 128 where it says, “Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh.” That is an accurate assessment of the theme of this psalm. It says, “A Song of Ascents.” Psalm 128:1, “How blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh, who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands, how blessed will you be and how well will it be for you.” Now get this, starting in verse 3, note how a godly fear of the Lord is tied in with God's blessing upon the family. It says, “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold for thus shall a man be blessed who fears Yahweh.” Note that link between the blessings of fearing the Lord being realized in the context of one's home with a “wife who is like a fruitful vine,” it says. And children, plural, as in more than one—four children, seven children, fourteen children, whatever—shooting up, it says, “like olive plants all around your table,” verse 3. The same idea comes through back in Psalm 127:4-5 of the blessing of many children. Verse 4, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.” What a vivid picture that is. A quiver would be that pouch that an archer, or in this case a warrior, would sling across his side or behind his back to store his arrows in. And obviously in battle the more arrows one has in his quiver, the better. The more effective warrior he'll be if he has seven arrows in that quiver versus just one. Well in a similar way the Scriptures depict the fullness of one's quiver, the fullness of one's dinner table, the fullness today of one's Sprinter van as depicting the fullness of God's blessing on a man, on a marriage, on his family.

Now are these two psalms giving a mandate? Must all marriages, Biblical marriages, God-honoring marriages produce lots and lots and lots and lots of children? Is that mandatory? Is that required by God through His Word? I don't think we can go that far. What we can say, though, is that we must check our humanly imposed rationales for how we limit how many children we decide to have as we measure them against how God has designed things to be. We must check our humanly inspired rationales like, Another kid? Kids are so expensive these days. Or I don't know if I can handle more than one. Or something like I don't know that we want to take a chance on having another child because what if the child comes out with a birth defect. These are humanly inspired rationales and we have to measure those against God's Word and make sure we are not overstepping the line of God's overarching design for full quivers and full dinner tables, maybe full Sprinter vans, maybe full bedrooms, even bedrooms with bunk beds where kids are packed in like sardines. Comfortable? Maybe not. Convenient? Not always. A source of great blessing and joy? Absolutely. Psalm 127:3, “Behold, children are an inheritance of Yahweh, the fruit of the womb is a reward.” But how? How are children a reward? How are they a gift? How is the man who fills his quiver with them blessed? I mean, I could go on all day on this topic, but I'll limit myself to just a few. For starters children are the image of the glory of God, children are image bearers. They bear God's image just like adults do. So, when you add children to your household you're adding more image bearers to your home, under your roof. Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him male and female He created them,” meaning when a child is added to the family, when God blesses a husband and a wife with a child He is giving them not only another human being that resembles one or the both of them; but He is giving them another human being who bears His image, God's image, a little cooing, drooling, walking, talking image bearer of the glory of God.

Here is another way in which children are a gift and a blessing to any marriage. Children are our most natural outlet for Biblical teaching and training and evangelism and discipleship. This was true in Israel as it is true in the church age today. In Israel of old this was the command given to parents and primarily to fathers to pass down to their children. Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear oh Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Then verse 6, Deuteronomy 6:6, “These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as phylacteries between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Teaching, training, instruction. The same principle carries over to the New Testament era, the church age, for followers of Christ today. We're told this in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Teaching, training, evangelism, pouring into. It's a natural outlet with our children.


A third way that God's blessing of children are a gift and a blessing to any marriage is that they are a Constant Sources of Prayer. That command we are given in I Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing” takes on a certain meaning and a sharper focus once we start having children. A husband and a wife who love the Lord, if they have been blessed with children, they never run out of topics for which to pray. Right? Lord, it's 1:30 a.m., please help this child go back to sleep. Lord, help us through this teething phase. Lord, help my son go through the teenage years, help my daughter who is feeling ostracized from a friend group, help my child find a godly spouse. We never stop praying for our children and in doing so we are always being obedient to pray and we're never running out of topics to pray. Husbands and wives who are also parents find themselves growing in prayer, the parents' prayer list is never ending.

A fourth one as to why children are a gift and a blessing from the Lord is that Children are Just Fun. I don't have a Bible verse for that one, sorry about that. But they are just fun. I mean, what a gift God has given us when we think about the gift of children. We think of all the things God has done for us as Believers. He created us, He didn't have to. He saved us, He didn't have to. For those of us who are married He gave us the gift of a spouse, He didn't have to. And then grace upon grace upon grace He adds children to our homes, He adds arrows to the quiver. Then those kids just happen to be a lot of fun, they are kids that we can push on the swing and wrestle within the basement or pack lunches for or greet when they come home from school or throw the ball around with. They really are “an inheritance,” Psalm 127:3, “and a reward.”

We've considered the richness of the marriage bed, we've looked at the richness of the bunk bed, third, we want to look at the richness now of The Made Bed. As anyone who has experienced any number of years of living, adult living, can attest there is a certain amount of redundancy and monotony to life under the sun, as Ecclesiastes would put it. In fact, why don't you turn with me to the book of Ecclesiastes, I want us to take a quick peek at some of what Solomon said there in Ecclesiastes 1:3, written by Solomon. He identifies himself here as the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Ecclesiastes 1:3 says, “What advantage does man have in all his labor in which he labors under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever. Also, the sun rises and the sun sets and hastening to its place it rises there again. Going toward the south and circling toward the north the wind goes circling along and on its circular courses the wind returns. All the rivers go into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers go, there they continually go. All things are wearisome; man is not able to speak of it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything which one might say, See this, it is new? Already it has been for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things and also of the later things which will be. There will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.”

Now, what Solomon writes here is this perspective of the nonbeliever, the one who sees this life as that life under the sun as all there is, the one who see this life as being this repetitious and tedious and vain and sad cycle of repeated events over and over until we die. Now if one were to take that world view that is being articulated here and lay it over a marriage, truly what a sad state of existence that would be, because yes there would be important milestones, there would be things like anniversaries and graduations and birthdays even in a non-believing world view marriage. And yes, there would still be enjoyable experiences—date nights and vacations and the overall enjoyment of each other in every respect. But let's be honest, we know that that is not what makes a marriage. What makes a marriage is everything that happens in between—waking up, checking the mail, going to the bank, picking up groceries, dropping off the dog at the vet, dropping off the kid at school, mowing the lawn, painting the walls, rearranging the closet, rearranging the sock drawer, lounging on the couch, rocking on a chair, reading a book, watching a show, listening to the scrapes of silverware on plates as you eat yet another meal together, enduring each other's annoying daily habits, chewing, gulping, sneezing and then you fall back asleep together again only to do it all over again the next day. See, Solomon was on to something in Ecclesiastes, he was on to the fact that life is full of repetition—ordinary life, regular activities, cyclical activities which we all go through in these bodies on this planet as we plod our way along. There really is nothing new under the sun. But here is the thing, in the God-honoring marriage all of those things I just mentioned down to the scraping of plates and the sneezing and the chewing and all the rest, and those repetitive tasks I just mentioned right down to the level of making the bed that you slept on the night before, they have great significance and great meaning and great value. Why?

Turn with me over to Colossians 3. In the Scripture reading this morning we were in Colossians 3:1-14 but I want us to pick it up down the page in Colossians 3:18 where we are going to see another Biblical depiction of the God-honoring marriage. Colossians 3:18, this ought to sound familiar from last Sunday because this runs in parallel to the Ephesians 5 passage. Colossians 3:18 says, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.” So, there are those two commands again, those primary commands, the one to the wives that they are to submit to their husbands, lined up under their husbands, and the other to the husbands that they are to love their wives. I gave you 24 points last week; you can look those up some other time. But if you would, just look at one verse above that passage at Colossians 3:17 where we are told this, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” See what the God-honoring husband and the God-honoring wife are charged to do and able to do in those humdrum repetitive scenes of life is seek to bring glory to God in all that they do. Meaning there is richness to the emptied dishwasher, and there is richness to the mowed lawn and there is richness to the emptied-out trash can and there is richness to the wiped down sink and there is richness to the washed car and there is even richness to the made bed, all tussled and messy from the night before. Why? Well, because in a God-honoring marriage both husband and wife are striving with the Lord's power to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, or to do all, as it says in I Corinthians 10:31, “to the glory of God.” All of it, no matter how seemingly mundane or insignificant it might seem, it is woven into the tapestry of these two lives which have been joined together. And all of it done rightly and with right motives brings glory to God.

We have looked at the Richness of the Marriage Bed, we've looked at the Richness of the Bunk Bed, we've just considered the Richness of the Made Bed, seeing how God blesses marriages even in those seemingly mundane, ordinary, day-to-day activities and tasks in marriage. Next and this is our fourth point; we want to consider the Richness of the Empty Bed. Many of you have already experienced this in full, some of us have experienced this in our family in part at this point, while others of you, younger families particularly, have yet to experience this. By this I mean the empty nest phase of life, the empty nest phase of your marriage, that phase where the children you've raised, they are still your children, will always be your children, but they are about to be or no longer are under your roof. You've raised them but now you have released them or are about to release them. You've been faithful, Ephesians 6:4, to bring them up in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” but now they've flown the coop or it's about time for them to fly the coop. Now if today's sermon were about parenting, we would be focusing on those handful of years that the Lord lends us, really His children, for those 18 or so years under which they are in our home. If this were a parenting sermon it would be all about how to be intentional in pouring into those kids in those years while you still have them, how you lay down that solid Biblical foundation while that cement has not quite set. But this isn't a parenting sermon, this is a marriage sermon, and this is all about the two of you as husband and wife. And so the question is, how is it going to go or how is it going between the two of you when the only occupants of your home are just the two of you? When all of the other beds in the home are empty?

Well, this would be as good a time as any to remind us of all that the most important earthly relationship you have or ever will have is not your relationship with your children, but as much as you love them and as much as you are prone to idolize them. No, your most important earthly relationship is that one relationship that pictures that relationship between Christ and the church, Ephesians 5, meaning, of course, that your most important earthly relationship is your relationship with your spouse. I'm willing to be proven wrong about this later, but I do believe at the bema seat, the judgment seat of Christ mentioned in II Corinthians 5:10, the first earthly relationship that any of us who are married will face Christ and give an account to right away, will be our relationship with our spouse, meaning the husband will give his account to Christ first for how he lovingly led and loved and protected and served his wife, and then he'll answer for his children, and then he'll answer for his church service and then he'll answer for his work or whatever. The same goes for any woman who has had the blessing of the experience of being a wife. She'll first give an account to Christ for how she joyfully folded under the loving leadership of her husband and how she submitted to him, how she subjected herself to him, and then she'll answer for her children and then she'll answer for any relationships with other women she had in the church and so on and so on. Meaning when it comes to standing before the Lord one day, we'll stand and give an account for much more than those 18 years of life as a unified family with those kids still under the roof. Instead, what we'll give an account for is how we loved each other, husband and wife, past those years all the way to the end. How we honored each other, how we served each other, how we loved each other even past the child-rearing phase.

I ask this question all the time of married couples when they come to my office for counseling, marriage counseling. I'll bring up the example of the rocking chair, and I'll ask the husband and the wife who are going through issues or problems and need some counsel, I'll ask them this. When you are in the rocking chair phase of your marriage and your life and when the kids are long gone and the calls aren't coming in as often as they used to and when that house is a lot quieter and those beds are all empty and it's just the two of you, husband and wife, and you are sitting in those rocking chairs and you are just watching cars go by and you are looking at cloud formations in the sky and you are watching the grass grow in your lawn, what do you think about when you think of that phase? Do you think of that phase with dread? Do you think of that phase with fear as you think of looking over at this older, grayer, more wrinkly version of the one to whom you said, I do? Or do you look forward to that phase with anticipation and joy and excitement as you think of how the Lord is going to grow the two of you even closer in maturity after the kids are gone? How you answer that question right now says a lot about whether you have embraced the joy and the beauty of God's design for marriage. Your answer to that question says a lot about you right now as to whether you are walking in a manner worthy of your calling today as a husband or as a wife. Consider these words yet again from Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9:9, he says, “See life,” other translations have it as “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given to you under the sun.” So not just the early days of your life, not just the days when you have the six-pack like Solomon, but all the days of your life.

That was the Richness of the Empty Bed, the richness of the empty nest phase of marriage. That takes us now, if you are a note taker to our fifth point, the Richness of the Hospital Bed. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you would, to James 1 as we consider the Richness of the Hospital Bed. James 1:2 says this, “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith brings about perseverance, and let perseverance have its perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” That text is a familiar one to many of you here this morning, some of you have memorized it, you've certainly heard it quoted. What this passage concedes, and this just makes me appreciate not only the clarity and the inspiration and the sufficiency of Scripture but its realistic transparency, what this passage concedes is that there will be times in the Christian life where the Lord breaks us and brings us near through our afflictions. It happens, it happens in the Christian life, and it happens in Christian marriage. You may have heard the name of B. B. Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, you see why he went by B. B., was a prolific theologian in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in fact many of his works are still very timely for today. Warfield had a wife whose name was Annie who was severely medically afflicted. As newlyweds the Warfields honeymooned in Germany and while on that trip they got caught in a very violent thunderstorm. And while the details of that story are a little bit fuzzy, there was something about that storm and its ferocity that traumatized Annie Warfield. It caused provable damage to her nervous system from which she never recovered. Annie spent most of her remaining years from those very early years of marriage all the way through as an invalid of sorts. She got increasingly more incapacitated as the years went on. Well, her husband, B.B., though a prolific and in-demand writer and author and theologian, a busy and on-call kind of guy, he never lost sight of his primary calling, which was to her, to his wife. He gave her constant attention and care all the way to the point of her death. He had a policy of never leaving her side for more than two hours at a time. So that impacted where they lived near the campus at Princeton where he taught, it impacted the very schedule that he kept, when he could keep office hours, when he could teach classes, when he could meet with men. He was totally compassionate and caring and tender toward the woman God had given him to be his wife. So, she was a bedridden wife and ultimately, she was a hospital-bound wife and one who died prematurely. Many spouses before her and many since her have found themselves in similar circumstances, lying on a hospital bed, breathing through a tube, eating through a tube, watching their vital signs on the screen. And sitting next to them all the while holding their hand, praying for them, praying with them, not leaving their side, walking through that trial with them is their spouse, the one with whom they are in that one flesh relationship. That spouse is living out the truth here of James 1. “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith brings about perseverance, and let perseverance have its perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” A passage like the parallel passage in I Peter 1 shows us that God did not promise us a bed of roses in this life. No, since the fall it has been thorns and thistles. And in marriages this means that there can be a spouse with failed kidneys or with leukemia or with a terminal disease. Those things can happen and they do happen and they are bound to happen. Those are the conditions of real life in a real fallen world, living in sin-cursed bodies on a sin-cursed planet.

So, the question always is how are we going to live in light of those realities, not only individually but in our marriages? Are we going to consider it all joy when our spouse is laid up in a hospital bed? Or are we going to fight God and try to persuade Him that we really know what is best? Are we going to remember Paul's words in Philippians 3:8, “I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?” Or are we going to grow embittered toward Him? Are we going to, Galatians 3:11, “live by faith?” Or are we going to insist that God give us sight of something different? Are we, Romans 5:3, going to “boast in our afflictions?” Or are we going to steer clear of them? Do we think God was being serious when He said in II Corinthians 4:17 that “our momentary light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison?” Can we say as we look into the eyes of our spouse on their hospital bed, as we see them hurting and as we hurt with them, as we see them suffering as we suffer with them, can we say as Paul said in II Corinthians 7:4, “I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction?”

Well, on a related note we now come to our sixth and final point for today. We've considered the Richness of the Marriage Bed, the Richness of the Bunk Bed, the Richness of the Made Bed, the Richness of the Empty Bed, the Richness of the Hospital Bed and now here is the Richness of the Death Bed. As a pastor, I've been in two types of rooms when someone is about to die. In one type of room are those folks who have no hope in Jesus Christ. In that situation when it is a marriage situation when the one spouse begins to flatline, when they are laboring to breathe, when their skin gets gray and clammy and eventually gets cold, the grief of the other spouse, the one left behind is hard to describe. It is unimaginable. There is despair, there is pain, there is hopelessness, oftentimes there is wailing. In the other type of room where faith in Jesus Christ prevails on the part of both parties the spouse who is about to become a widow or a widower, as the case may be, they are surely sad and they are shedding real tears, revealing their sadness about saying farewell to their spouse, but their tears are not tears of despair. Their tears are more like tears of completion. Because they know certain promises from God's Word, they know truths like II Corinthians 5:8, “We are of good courage and prefer to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” Or Philippians 1:23, “To depart and be with Christ, that is very much better.” They, the surviving spouse, knowing Christ and knowing that their departing spouse knows Christ, they know that each phase that they have been through with their spouse up to that point. The marriage bed, the bunk bed, the made bed, the empty bed, even the hospital bed—it was all preparatory for that moment, the death bed. Where faith would soon become sight and that vow, they made years and years ago, 'til death do us part, would now become reality. Remember those words from Samuel Johnson at the beginning:
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And born in bed, in bed we die.
Indeed, we do and thank the Lord for giving many of us a spouse to go through all of that with.

That concludes, friends, our One Flesh series. We've worked our way through the Roots of a God-honoring Marriage, the Requirements of a God-honoring Marriage, the Roles in a God-honoring Marriage and today the Richness of a God-honoring Marriage. My prayer for you, my prayer for myself, my prayer for all of us as a church as we look forward to Jack Hughes coming and hosting our marriage conference here in a few months; is that we would be a church which is marked by strong, thriving, God-honoring marriages from consummation all the way to death, all for the glory of God.