The Freedom of True Love
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Finding consensus in today's culture is hard to come by. We are surrounded by competing worldviews about identity, morality, and truth. It can be difficult to know how to engage with people about Christianity. How do we navigate the skepticism or even hostility toward the Christian faith?

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The scripture is from Jeremiah chapters 2 and 3. You of this generation, consider the word of the Lord. Have I been a desert to Israel or a land of great darkness? Why do my people say, we are free to roam? We will come to you no more. Does a maiden forget her jewelry or bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.

How skilled you are at pursuing love. Even the worst of women can learn from your ways. On your clothes, men find the lifeblood of the innocent poor, though you did not catch them breaking in. Yet in spite of all this, you say, I am innocent. He's not angry with me, but I will pass judgment on you because you say, I have not sinned.

Why do you go about so much changing your ways? You will be disappointed by Egypt as you were by Assyria. Go, proclaim this message to the north. Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful, declares the Lord. I will not be angry forever. Only...

Acknowledge your guilt. You have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree and have not obeyed me, declares the Lord. Return, faithless people, declares the Lord, for I am your husband. I will choose you, one from a town and two from a clan, and bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart.

who will lead you with knowledge and understanding. In those days when your numbers have increased greatly in the land, declares the Lord, men will no longer say, the ark of the covenant of the Lord. It will never enter their minds or be remembered. It will not be missed, nor will another one be made. This is God's word. We've been saying each week that Jeremiah is...

lives in a fragmented culture. The prophet Jeremiah lived in a culture in which there was no more coherent consensus about what life was for, how to determine right and wrong, what society should be like. It was a fragmented culture. It wasn't a coherent culture. And we live in

in a fragmented culture. And so we're looking each week at a little bit at some of the passages in Jeremiah that can help us know how we should respond to our times. Now, two weeks ago, we said one of the great challenges of living in a fragmented culture was deciding what to believe. How do we know what truth is true and so on? Last week, we looked at the challenge in a fragmented culture of identity.

Identity. How do you decide who you want to be and how do we get ourselves an identity? This week, we look at a subject which actually in all fragmented cultures, in all cultures where there's no consensus about what to do, we actually look at a subject, a topic, something that becomes an issue, something that becomes very glamorous, something that becomes very important in fragmented cultures, which is sex, sexuality. Why? Why?

Well, you see, in a culture in which people really don't know who they are and really don't know what life is about, in a culture like ours, our culture doesn't tell us. So we have to figure that out. We're not sure. We don't know who we are. We don't know what life is about. And the fastest way to do an end run around that and still feel good about ourselves is romance.

It's the ultimate philosophical narcotic. I don't know who I am. I don't know what life's about. But when I'm with her, when I'm with him, I feel like somehow life is significant. Don't ask me. I mean, when it comes right down to it, as far as I know, we're just sort of an accident. We're just an accidental collocation of molecules. But when I'm with her, when I'm with him, see, it's an end run.

This is the reason why in all fragmented cultures, romance, love, sex, marriage becomes inordinately important and actually also a very confusing issue. Jeremiah will show us that sex can be, romance can be, either the ultimate spiritual red herring. It can either be the ultimate fatal detour or it can be a clue to how to find your way home. In this passage, Jeremiah tells us about an offer, an incredible offer,

The problem with the offer and the resolution. An offer, the problem, and the resolution. Because the offer is the ultimate lover. The problem is that we're faithless lovers. And the solution is a redeemed love relationship. Okay, let's take a look first of all at the ultimate lover, then the faithless lover, then the redeemed lover. The ultimate lover is

God says, verse 12, God says in verse 32, in verse 12 he says to his people, you are my bride in verse 32. In verse 12 he says, I am your husband. God says, I'm your husband. You are my bride.

Now, what we're coming in on here is we are coming in to the middle, in a way, of a major theme in the Bible that actually lasts all the way through the Bible and starts the beginning and comes to the end and in some ways pulls the whole Bible together. It's a thread. It's a theme. Let me show you. In the beginning, Genesis 1 and 2, the story of creation. And the story of creation is so cosmic. It's a story of cosmic transcendent breadth.

Its scope is breathtaking because we have galaxies and we have land masses and we have oceans and they are moving around and in turmoil and in motion. But then we get to the climax of the story of creation, which is in Genesis 1 and 2. We get to the climax of all this cosmic transcendent creation. And the climax we have is a husband and a wife getting married.

Now look, even if you, I mean this is so familiar that we as readers miss this, how odd that is. Because even if you decide, yes, as many people say, marriage is the basic building block of human society, even if it is, doesn't it seem rather incongruous to make the climax of the depiction of all this cosmic creation a husband and wife getting married?

See, if you're reading smartly, you're saying there's more than meets the eye here, but Genesis doesn't tell us what that is. So we have to read on. So we read on.

And as we read on, we come to the books of Moses, and a very strange thing happens in light of the beginning there, is that God, in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, rather repeatedly, he will talk to his people and say, you know, you're disobeying me. But when he says you're disobeying me, when he says you're turning from me, he uses the language of sexual misconduct. He doesn't just say, you're breaking my rules. He says, no.

You're cheating on me. You're committing adultery on me. What is that about? Then you move on a little further. If you want to understand, you keep on reading. And as you get into the prophets, when you get into Micah and you get into Hosea and Isaiah, and especially, by the way, in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, this idea...

This theme is teased out. It's developed in remarkably vivid ways. So you have passages like this in Hosea. God speaks of his people. I am now going to allure her and I'm going to speak tenderly to her. In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. You will no longer call me my master, for I will betroth you to me forever.

In Isaiah 54, do not be afraid. You will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace. You will not be humiliated for your maker is your husband. The Lord Almighty is his name. In Isaiah 62, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you. This is astounding, but we're not done. Let's skip a chapter. We'll get back to it. Let's go all the way to the end. Book of Revelation.

All the way to the end. And what do we have at the end? Not just in Revelation, but at the end of Revelation, at the end of the history of the world. You know, beginning of Genesis, the beginning of the history of the universe. The end of Revelation, the end of the history of the universe. And what do you have? Another wedding. The history of the world begins with a wedding and it ends with a wedding. But what a wedding. Because you have the city of the people of God, the people of God, dressed up.

has a bride beautifully for her husband, coming down the aisle, as it were, to him. The wedding supper of the Lamb. Now listen, any book that begins with a wedding and ends with a wedding, the author is trying to tell you, this is all about that. And now we understand, I hope, only when you read the whole Bible all the way through,

what it was that Genesis was doing, why the husband and wife thing was there at the very, very beginning as the climax of the story of creation. Here's why. God is saying to us, the Bible is saying to us, in the relationship of a husband and wife, you have the clue to the meaning of the entire universe and to the meaning of all of history. You have a clue in a marriage of a husband and wife to the meaning of the entire universe and the meaning of all of history. First, the meaning of the universe.

Here's what the Bible is saying. This is what the God of the Bible is saying. I don't just want you to be my subjects. I want you to be my spouse. I don't just want your dutiful service. I want your most intimate love. I don't just want to be your master, your shepherd. You heard that. I want to be your lover, your spouse, your husband. That's what God is saying. And here, let's go a little further. What does this mean? The meaning of the universe?

If you understand this and you look out into the universe, you do not see dark, blank, cold space. You see that at the bottom of the universe, at the roots of the universe, is a God pursuing romantic love with us. That the universe is about romance. It's about that. Here's Adam. Plop Adam down in the garden, right? In Genesis 2. And he's not happy. Why? How could paradise not be enough?

Because God makes us so radically relational that even paradise wasn't enough unless we had somebody else with us. But what are we radically relational for? What are we made radically relational for? And if you would talk to those few people in the world who have had the most celebrity, the most acclaim, the most adulation, and usually what goes along with that, the most romance ever,

They will always say, it wasn't enough. You know why? Because the Bible says, God is saying, I have made you to be married to me. I have made you for an intimate relationship with me. This is the reason why in Genesis 2 we see the relationship between a husband and a wife is the clue to the meaning of the universe. Look at the very best human marriages and you get at least a dim hint of what I've made you to have with me. I made you for intimacy with me.

I made you for mutual joy in one another's beauty. I've made you for radical commitment. I made you for all of that. That's the meaning of the universe. I made the universe to be our home to live together in forever. And it's not only the meaning of the universe. This is also the key to the meaning of history. This is the reason why it goes from Genesis to Revelation the way it does, because you can summarize all of the history of the world like this. God says, I love you, but I lost you.

You gave your heart to other lovers and that's destroying you. But I love you too much to just let you destroy yourself. So I'm going to move heaven and earth to bring you back, to get you back, whatever the cost. And if you understand the statement I just made, the kind of one or two sentences I just summarized, that is the meaning of all of history. That's what God's doing. That's what the whole Bible is about right there.

In other words, you could put it this way. Ray Ortlund has written a great Bible study book on this. He says, marriage is not just another mutation of human social evolution. It's a divine creation intended to reveal the ultimate romance guiding all of time and all of eternity. Now, if that's true, and we've got to move on here. If that's true, that's the offer, the ultimate lover. If that's true, two implications I want to go over, two implications.

Here's the first implication. If this is the meaning, if this is true, now you'll see, and if you believe this, you'll know how valuable you are. You'll know what your future is. And you'll know that your life is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Now you know what you're made for. Now you know how valuable you are. Now you know what everything is about. Now you see ultimate significance in your future. But what if you don't know that?

What if you don't know this? What if you don't know what you were made for? What if you don't know really what your meaning in life is or whether there is any meaning or whether there's any significance? You know what you're going to do then? Because marriage was made by God this way, it'll be the next best thing to God. It'll be the next best thing. You see why it's, in other words, if you don't know about this divine marriage,

you are going to load spiritual freight into love and romance and sexuality far greater than any human romantic relationship can bear. You are going to try to get your deepest needs met in it. You're going to try to get your deepest senses, your deepest longings met in it. And no matter how good the partner, no matter how good that person is, no matter how strong the marriage is or the relationship is to start,

It can never bear up that weight. Your soul is like a huge truck that you're driving onto a bridge that can't hold it up. It will collapse. Ernest Becker, who wrote the denial of death, Pulitzer Prize winning book some years ago, he talks about this. He says, now we see how modern man edged himself into an impossible situation. He still needed to know his life mattered in the scheme of things. He still had to merge himself with some higher meaning person.

But now that he had no God, he's talking about secular contemporary man, now that he no longer had God, how was he to do this? One of the first ways that occurred to the modern person was the romantic solution. The self-glorification that we used to get from God, see,

in his innermost being, he now looked for from the love partner. So the lover becomes the way to fulfill one's whole life. The worth and the meaning comes now from the loved one. The romantic option may be an ingenious and creative attempt, but it is a lie that must fail. What is it we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God?

We want redemption, nothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, of our feelings of nothingness. We want redemption. We want to be justified, to know that our existence is not in vain. We turn to the love partner for this validation. We expect them to make us good and real through their love. Needless to say, Becker concludes, human partners cannot do that.

If you don't know who you are, if you're not sure you're a worthwhile person, if you don't know what the meaning of life is, you're going to load all of that need into the human relationship, which it cannot bear. Now, you see why you'll be attracted to it? Because it's the clue to what you really need. But if you mistake it for the real thing, in other words, if you look at life,

human love, romance, instead of through it to the one it points to, to one it's designed to lead you to, you're going to be devastated. Can't you see yourself doing it? Doesn't this explain a few things about your life up to this point? Try it on. Don't you want to make sense of your life? This will help you make sense of your history. Think about it. That's the first implication. If this is true, then we're going to have a tendency to load way too much.

onto the person that we fall in love with, that person can never possibly fulfill the things you're looking for from that person. You're going to ruin the greatness of the relationship if you make it ultimate instead of the penultimate thing it's supposed to be. Second implication. If this is true, God is calling you into something way beyond what the modern world believes is even out there in terms of faith options. The modern world basically thinks of two basic faith options, I think.

Religion and spirituality. See, conservative people like religion. Progressive people like spirituality. Conservative people like religion. Religion, you have certain doctrines you believe. You have certain observances you observe and customs. You have certain life. You have certain rules and guidelines for life and you do them. That's religion.

Progressive people like spirituality. They like to say, well, I'm spiritual. I'm not religious, which means I'm seeking for a sense of oneness between myself and my world, between myself and my spiritual self. I'm a spiritual person. Now listen, what God is talking about here obviously includes both of those things, but goes infinitely beyond. Here's what God is saying. I don't just want you to believe in me as an abstract theorem.

I don't want you to just think of, I don't want to just be a power that you go to when you're in trouble. I want to be married. I want to be the center of your life. Have you ever been in love with somebody who clearly saw you as more of just a pit stop on the way to the things he or she was really after? God says, make me the center. Make me the reason you get up in the morning. Make me the center of your mind, your will, your emotion. Make me the very center of your life. And if you do,

I'll give you intimacy. Your prayer life will not just be petition. It won't just be give me, help me, give me, help me, give me, help me. I'll give you love. I'll give you the thing that you've been always looking for. And the more you're ravished with me, the more you will be astounded and transformed to see how ravished I am with you. That's what's offered. Have you got it? That's what's offered. Are you just religious? Are you just spiritual? Are you taking the offer of the ultimate lover?

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Okay, number one. The second thing we learn here in Jeremiah, though, is there's a problem with this offer. And the problem with this offer is that we're faithless. Now, what does that mean? Well, let's take a look. This is pretty graphic. Can you all get ready? I know it's New York, but still. In verse 13...

He says, notice, this is what I said you see all, especially through the books of Moses. Notice in verse 13, he says, you have rebelled against the Lord at the beginning. At the end, he says, you have not obeyed me, but look at sexual misconduct. He sees it in terms of a relationship. He says, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree. What does that mean? Now, that is a redo of verse 20 of chapter 2, just a few verses before. It's just a little bit more vivid.

God says, on every hill and under every tree, spreading tree, on every high hill and every spreading tree, you lay down. Now, what is he talking about? What he's talking about is the fact that the Israelites, though they said they believed in God and they certainly were nominally believers in God, they went to the worship of the Canaanite deities.

On every high hill, because it was a symbol of transcendence, and under spreading trees, because it was a symbol of fertility, the Canaanites put up their gods. And you see, what kind of gods were they? Well, various sorts of gods. But if you were a farmer and you really, really wanted a good crop, might as well sacrifice to the agriculture god. And if you were a love-starved person, you might go to a fertility god and say, you know, get me a mate, get me children.

Or, and there's a specific mention of it here, what if you were really after political power? So, for example, you wanted to forge an alliance with Egypt because out of Egypt you thought you could get some leverage, you'd get some political power. Well, then, of course, you're going to bow down to the Egyptian gods because that will put you in their good graces. But what God says is not just, oh, you're committing heresy.

He doesn't just say, you realize that you're syncretistic here. You worship me at the temple and then you go to the agriculture God, you go to the political power God, you go to the sexuality God. He doesn't just call it heresy, he calls it adultery. In fact, he's as vivid as possible. You know what he's saying we're doing? You know what he's saying you're doing with the agriculture God, with the commerce God, with the sexuality God, with the political power God? Literally what he says in verse 20, on every high hill, under every spreading tree, you spread your legs.

I mean, literally, it says you sprawl, you open up, you spread your legs like a prostitute. Now, this is not my choice of language. This is not even really Jeremiah's choice of language. It's God's choice of language. Is it there for titillation? No, it's there for illumination. Here's what he's saying. When he says...

That if I'm not the center of your life, commerce, money, success, romance, political power, if I am not the lover of your soul, you are going to be spreading your legs for some other lover of your soul. Or put it this way, we all know how intense sexual love is. We all know how absorbing it is. We all know how intense it is. Because in it, the lover sees all of you

but dotes on you. And when you see that, you feel beautiful. Now God, I know this is wild, but God has the audacity to say at the spiritual level in every single human heart, something analogous is happening with analogous intensity and power, with analogous desire to be assured of your beauty and worth. You are giving yourself in the most

deep and intense way to other things besides me. So for example, what do you think the most about? What do you spend most of your time? Are you always thinking about your business? If you get to this level of success, you'll be able to make this much money. You'll be able to buy this. Or if you get to this level of success, you'll be able to capitalize that and you'll be able to sell this off and you'll be able to move it up to the higher level and you'll be able to hire more people. Are you always thinking about your business, about the money you're making? Are you always thinking about it? Even today, we call that fantasizing.

You know what you've done with success? You've gotten into bed with it. Spiritually, you've gotten into, you've given yourself to it. You're saying, this is how I know I'm somebody. This is how I know I'm somebody. And you know what God is saying? When you do that, when you do that, you have lost control. You are out of control.

For example, a couple of years ago, there was an article in New York Times about athletes, not just professional, but even amateur athletes, really serious athletes. What happens when they have a major injury? They tend to go, not all of them, but they tend to go into depression. It's not physiological. One of the guys in the article said, why? It is simple. When an athlete gets a serious injury, it sends them into existential crisis. They don't know who they are. And they often feel it has totally wiped out their very reason for being.

Does that make sense? It should make sense. You say, well, how natural? Of course, if you're a great athlete, that's going to make you feel like that's how I know who I am. That's where I am. That's how I can walk around with confidence. Of course, it's natural, but it's devastating. Spiritually, you're in bed with your athleticism. And of course, as we've been saying here today, the worst is this. If in a romantic relationship,

If you're not only getting in bed with somebody physically, but you're actually getting in bed with them spiritually, you're making them the thing that really, really makes you sure that you're okay. If they're the most important thing in your life rather than God, what happens? Any lover of your soul besides God abuses you. Oh, I don't mean the individual does, but the love does.

Let me just continue Ernest Becker. Ernest Becker gives a perfect example. When the romantic solution to the problem of not having a God, he says, when you make your love interest, your romance, the main thing in your life, listen, listen what happens. He says, if your partner becomes God to you, he or she can very easily become the devil to you, and the reasons are not far to seek. For one thing, one becomes bound to the object, independency. You need him or her for self-justification.

You lose yourself in the other person. No wonder such dependency carries with it so much underlying resentment. And also this, any shortcoming in the partner becomes a major threat to you. If a woman loses her beauty or she doesn't have the strength and dependability she once did or she loses intellectual sharpness or she falls short in any of the thousands of ways, the shadow of imperfection

falls on you. Why? Because the one who loves us must be strong and beautiful. If we are to be assured, we are strong and beautiful. And now we feel diminished, so we have to leave them. Or, on the other hand, what if your partner gets too strong and too beautiful? Then we might have to hack them down to size to save ourselves. Don't you see why God says in chapter 4, verse 30 of Jeremiah, he says, "...oh, devastated one."

What are you doing? Why dress yourself in scarlet and put on jewels of gold? Why shade your eyes with paint? You adorn yourself in vain because your lovers despise you. They seek your life. If you get in bed with success, it will drive you to the ground even if you get it. And if you don't get it, it will stab you every morning you get up the rest of your life. God says, I'm the only lover of your soul that won't abuse you. So how are we going to be delivered from our fatal attractions, spiritually speaking?

If there's anybody out there saying, well, you know, you've cast a little new light on things for me and I suppose I shouldn't be so emotionally dependent on my boyfriend. I suppose I shouldn't be so emotionally dependent on my girlfriend or on my success or on my art or on my career. Go ahead, just try. Just try. By a sheer act of the will, just say, I'm not going to be as emotionally dependent. I'm not. Go ahead, just try. There's no way you can turn the heat down.

There's no way you can get out of your fatal attractions just by an act of the will. Let me show you how you can. The third thing we learn from Jeremiah is that God has a plan. He's the ultimate lover. We're the faithless lovers, but he's got a plan for redemption. You see, if you're tracking this whole theme, one of the questions that comes up all the time is, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Marriage as a image for my relationship with God? That's kind of egalitarian, isn't it?

I mean, isn't it true? I mean, you can sort of, it's the idea of a king and a subject. You know, the subject obeys, but the king doesn't obey the subject. The subject obeys the king. But in marriage, isn't there a kind of reciprocity here? Don't both partners give their hearts? Don't both partners become vulnerable? Don't both partners give up their freedom? Where does God become vulnerable? Where does God give his heart?

That takes us to the chapter we've missed in our little jaunt from Genesis to Revelation. And even this prophecy of Jeremiah refers to it. The first little reference to it is the ark. This is a very, very odd... At the very end, we're told that in God's redemptive plan, he is going to get us back. He's going to get his bride back. He says, I'm going to make you my bride again. I will choose you. At first, it'll be one or two at a time, but eventually...

You're going to be my bride again. And when that happens, the ark of the Lord will be obsolete. It won't be remembered. It won't be missed. And no one will make another one. What does that mean? You'll never have God as a husband unless you get rid of the ark. You'll never see how God becomes our lover, our ultimate lover, unless you understand what happened to the ark. What happened to the ark? See, what is the ark? The ark was a box.

In the middle of the temple, and in some ways it was almost the center of temple worship. Why? Because the Ark of the Covenant, over the Ark of the Covenant, God's Shekinah glory, his intimate presence, dwelt in the center of the Holy of Holies, behind a veil, at the center of the temple, and nobody could even begin to draw near without sacrifice. Nobody could even begin to draw near without atonement for sin.

And one day a year, Yom Kippur, the high priest, took the blood sacrifice back to put it on the mercy seat over the ark. Why? Because all of Israel knew that all of its, it could only approach God through sacrifice and atonement because we've done wrong, because we've done spiritual adultery. Well, then how could the ark be

ever be removed. Here's how. I'm sure Jeremiah couldn't even imagine how this would be, but you and I can imagine. You know how? But here, it's not that hard. Centuries later, Jesus Christ sitting at a wedding feast and his mother comes up to him and says, you know, they're out of wine. And what does Jesus say? He says, woman, it is not my hour to die. So why is the wedding and the wine making him think about his death? Now let's face it. Jesus often spoke in odd ways.

And one of the oddest things he ever said about himself, believe it or not, he referred to himself as the bridegroom. You know, there's a place where somebody asked, why don't your disciples fast? And he says, should the friends of the bridegroom, he says, fast when the bridegroom is with them. The bridegroom. And anybody who understood the story I'm telling you here, anybody who understood the Bible, anybody who understood this storyline,

must have had their breath taken away, that a human being, Jesus, would walk around. He's the only human being that ever took the name that only God ever took, which is the bridegroom of his people. But as weird as that is, it explains why he said that to his mother. Because Jesus Christ, sitting at a wedding feast, thinking about his own death, realized this.

If he was ever going to get to the marriage supper of the Lamb, if he was ever going to get to that ultimate wedding feast that you and I have to be there, it's the only thing that will ever satisfy our hearts. If he was ever going to get to that wedding and have us in his arms, if he was ever going to drink the cup of blessing with us, he was going to have to drink the cup of eternal justice for us. The only way he could get rid of that barrier, the things we've done wrong,

And on the cross, when he died, the Bible tells us the veil of the Holy of Holies was ripped. Why? The veil's obsolete. The ark is obsolete. The temple's obsolete. All temples are obsolete. Why? Jesus gave us his heart. Jesus made himself vulnerable. Jesus says, I love you, but I've lost your love. But I'm going to, whatever the cost,

to get you back, to take away the barriers. I will pay. And he did. And he paid it. And he paid it. Now, you know what that means? I'll tell you what that means. Let's be as practical as we possibly can. At the very top of this passage, practically, there's this rhetorical question. Does a maiden forget her jewelry? A bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number. Do you see what that is saying? Do you realize the magnitude of what it's saying?

I have been at many, many weddings because I'm a minister, and I've seen a whole lot of brides getting ready. And when people are around them decking them out and putting on the jewelry and the makeup and all that, and she says, how do I look? There's only one word she wants to hear. And people give it to her, and they all want to hear, perfect. You look perfect. Because when you're a bride, you want to be perfect. Why do you want to be perfect? You want to be perfect because, well, you know, love.

You're coming to your bride, your bridegroom, and you want to look perfect for him. It's pretty simple, right? And that's the reason why you are decking yourself and decking yourself. And why at that moment, brides have more clothing on them pound for pound than they ever will again. More makeup, more jewelry, more ornaments. Why? Because the only way to look perfect when you know you're not at all perfect looking is to hide it.

Hide it under the satin hide it under the makeup hide it You know what you do is you know In other words what you're doing on your wedding day is trying to make sure as little as possible You look like what you really look like because you want to be perfect And you get pretty close because you know all that stuff really does make you look pretty good But god says Yeah, every other wedding's like that every other wedding's like that every other human groom every Even the abstract ones if you

are really going after success, then you've got to work extremely hard to be good. And if you want a great spouse, a great husband, a great wife, if you want a great lover, you have to really look good. You have to really watch your weight. You have to really look good. And you go into an incredible amount of cost to look beautiful. But God says, I'm different. I'm the only groom. Do you see what he says? Look at it. Look at the image. He says...

Does a bride forget her ornaments? Does a bride forget her wedding dress? But my people have forgotten me. I'm your ornaments. I'm your wedding dress. God says, I am the only groom who beautifies you. You don't beautify yourself for me. I beautify you. You don't do it at your expense. I have done it at my expense. How did he do that? God made him sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousnesses of God in him. He was stripped so we could be clothed.

He was deformed so we could be made beautiful. He paid for it. And don't you see what he's saying? God is saying, if you want to be my bride, you've got to let me clothe you. See, that's the reason why every other lover will drive you because you've got to be beautiful for him or her. Every other lover will drive you because you have got to, at incredible cost, cover over all the things that you know are wrong with you. But Jesus Christ says, I have looked into your heart. See, I'm your ultimate lover. I've seen you naked.

I've seen you to the bottom. I know everything about you and I've covered it. And now you are a beauty to me. And if you know that, you have the freedom of true love. Now you can go out into the world and try to be successful. Go ahead, but it's not going to drive you because ultimately you don't need it. And go ahead, try to find a husband, find a wife, have, you know, have, that's fine. But you'll be free because ultimately you've got me. If you've got me, then you're not going to be driven by any of these other things.

I am your ultimate lover because I've seen you naked. I know about your deformities. I know everything that's wrong with you. I know all the things that you think only you know. But I love you anyway. I have covered it. If and only if you know that deep in your own soul, will you have the freedom from all these other things around you? Only then will you be free from your fatal attractions. Why are some of you working so hard? Why are some of you unable to ever admit a mistake? Why are some of you, you know what you're doing? You're trying to cover yourselves.

How dare Jesus do this? How dare God use this kind of language? Do you know what a bridegroom actually feels when he actually sees his bride coming to him? You know the delight? You know the incredible joy he feels? How dare God use this kind of language? Say, that's how I look at you. He must mean it. Do you have that? Are you that secure in that? If you have that, then you can face anything. Then you face anything. Do you have it? Look, three things.

Quick applications. Number one, do you realize that marriage, if you let it, if you cooperate with it, marriage, no matter what your condition, always moves you to Jesus. That's what it was written for. That's what it was built for. If you're not married, there's a lot of people in this room that know this. If you're not married and that's a struggle, I know a lot of people at Redeemer who said, if it wasn't for the struggle I have over not being married, I never would have found Jesus, the true lover of my soul, the one I really need.

So not being married moves you to Jesus. And being poorly married or even having had a failed marriage moves you to Jesus. In fact, there is no more profound comfort if you have had a failed marriage than to know that God has had a failed marriage. God has had a failed marriage. He knows what it's like to be rejected. So go to him. He understands. And actually, if you have a great marriage, a really great marriage, you are the most in need of Jesus.

Because you're the most likely to be duped into thinking that this is going to really meet the deepest needs of my heart. It won't. It may for a long time, but it will not take you all the way to the end of your life. It will not. Marriage takes us to God, takes us to Jesus. Let it get rid of in the gospel the delusion that says, if I just have the one, if I could just get the one, then everything in my life would be okay. There is only one the one.

And he awaits you. At the end of time, there's the wedding feast. There's the lover's arms that when you get it, when you get him in toto, in full, his first kiss is going to make up for a thousand crappy lives. And you're only going to have one. You're going to immediately be overwhelmed. And the beauty he will put on you on that day will make the best wedding dress you've ever seen in your whole life look like an oily rag. So don't let marriage throw you. Let it take you.

Second, stop dating Jesus. You know, listen, Manhattan, go all the way. It's the Bible's imagery, not mine. Blame it. Or put it this way. In Manhattan, we have a lot of guys, right, who date, date, date, date, never commit, never get married, date, date, date, date. Okay, well, that's maybe true of Manhattan guys, but...

It's true on a spiritual level of every human being there is in the face of the earth. We want to date God. We don't want to marry him. We want to date and then break up, or we want to see him every so often when we need him. God says, how can you come to grips with someone who has given himself utterly for you without giving yourself utterly to him? Some of you just need to stop dating God and through Jesus, get married. Lastly,

A lot of you have got to stop being so satisfied with the incredibly low, diluted, weak prayer life you've got. Do you realize Charles Spurgeon at one point, who was a great Baptist preacher, said that his prayer life got so rich that some nights he had to say to God, God, would you please stop pouring love into my heart? I can't get any sleep.

He really literally was like that. Now you say, well, I don't know anything like that. Do you realize that the whole universe was built so you could have it? That everything God's doing in history is happening so you could have that. So surely if you just to say, I'm going to give it more time, I'm going to give it more effort, you're going to get it. Everything God's doing is so that he, not that you would just be petitioning him and asking for things and all that, but that he could come into your life and flood it with love.

Don't be so satisfied with the low-level prayer life you've got. You know what God says? You know what it says about God? You know what it says about us? Something really great in one other place in the book in the Old Testament. Be glad, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your punishment. He takes great delight in us. He quiets us with his love. He rejoices over us with singing.

Christ so loved the world, Christ so loved the church and gave himself up for her that he could present her to himself radiant without stain or blemish, but holy and blameless. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have shown us what is available. We ask that you would show us how to appropriate it. For some of us, it means giving ourselves to you for the first time. For some of us, it means recommitting ourselves.

and going deeper in prayer and experience. But we ask that you would, by your Holy Spirit, help us to apply this text to our lives. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's word to your life each day. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at gospelandlife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel and Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

This month's sermons were recorded in 2003. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.