Nobody knows God by having a good father. You don’t come to know God by having a good family background. Nobody comes to know God by having a good father. Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick and Colin, some people might be thinking, you know, I didn’t have a good relationship with my own father and because of that I don’t have a good picture of God. Yeah, you know, and the difficulty of that is that if that’s the way it works, then a person in that position is absolutely stuck. How am I going to come to know the love of God if I’ve not had the experience of love in my own background, if my own life is not rich with love? But you know what? The Gospel turns that absolutely on its head. We come to know the love of God in and through Jesus Christ himself and that’s how we learn what it is to love others. That’s how we learn what it is to be a loving father, a loving husband, a loving wife, by knowing the love of Christ. We’re going to look today at the church as the bride of Christ and that goes to the heart of the issue of love. We’re going to look at how Jesus loves and how we may love others in the light of knowing what it is to be loved by him. So we’ll see this today in Ephesians chapter 5, so I hope you’ll be able to join us there. As we begin our message, the bride. Here’s Colin. Today we’re wrapping up our series on the subject of the church. We’ve learned together what the church is. Our Lord Jesus, remember, used the word church on only two occasions. Once to describe all believers in every time and place and on the other occasion to describe a local congregation of believers simply like we are here today. And so because the Lord Jesus is our teacher, that is defining for us, for us the word church means either all believers in every time and place on earth and in heaven or it means a local congregation of believers like ourselves called out by God to worship and sent out by God to serve. That is what the church is according to Jesus. Now from that foundation of understanding what the church is, we have gone on in the book of Ephesians to see how it is described to us and our Lord uses images, pictures to help us understand this marvelous gift of the church. It is the body of Christ. Remember we saw from Ephesians chapter 1 that Christ is the head and the head operates through the body. This is how the head does his work. He has joined himself to the church and since Christ chooses to work through the church, why would we not choose to do the same? It is an amazing thing we saw that such a glorious head would join himself to a sometimes feeble body. But this is what Christ has done and because this is what he has done, we should not be ashamed to do likewise. Then last week we saw a second image from Ephesians in chapter 2. The church is compared there to a building in progress. Every Christian is a living stone and the Lord Jesus Christ is building us together into a holy temple that will be his home forever and forever. We saw that right now because this is a work in process. The local church often looks more like a building site than it looks like a showroom and we should not be surprised at that. We are not yet what we will be. Yet Christ chooses to make his home in this building site of the church and we should not be ashamed, therefore, to make our home here also. By the way, years ago I heard Dr. Warren Weirsbe say, never get hung up on one image of the church. I find that very helpful. There is nothing in the world quite like the church and because there’s nothing else like it, there is no one thing that you can compare it to. And for that reason, what God does to help us understand what it is to be the church, he uses multiple images that we need to put together to get a fuller understanding of this marvelous gift. By the way, you find the same thing when it comes to heaven, which also cannot be compared to any one thing on earth. And so it’s the city and then it’s the garden and so forth. And when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is unlike any other person who has ever lived, think of all the ways in which he is expressed to us. He is the friend, he is the brother, and so forth and so on. Multiple images of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so when you have multiple images of the church, you know that we’re talking about something that is unlike anything else in this world. Something especially glorious that needs multiple different ways of expressing its glorious reality for us to begin to get hold of it. So today, we come to the third image that is given to us of the church in Ephesians, and that is the beautiful image of the bride of Christ. I hope you’ll open your Bible at Ephesians chapter 5. The body, Christ’s work through the church. The building, Christ’s presence in the church. And now the bride, Christ’s love for the church. Now we begin at Ephesians 5 and verse 25 where we have this striking statement, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church. Now notice the order. The apostle does not say, hey guys, Jesus loves the church just like you love your wives. He doesn’t say that, and I’m very glad he doesn’t say that. We would be in trouble if the Bible said that. Because the truth is that sometimes we husbands do not love our wives very well. And so it is important that we see how the way that Christ puts this to us. Husbands, love your wives, verse 25, as Christ loves the church. In other words, we are being told that the union between Christ and the church is the model for Christian marriage. Paul is not saying Christian marriage teaches us about the church. He’s saying it the other way around. He’s saying that Christ’s relationship with the church teaches us about Christian marriage. That’s where we begin. And that is why the apostle says in verse 31, For this reason, you see it there, a man will leave his father and his mother. He’ll be united to his wife. The two will become one flesh. And you say, oh yeah, he’s obviously talking about marriage here. And then look what he says. This is a profound mystery. But I am talking about Christ and the church. So he’s not saying that you learn about Christ and the church from marriage. He’s saying that you learn about marriage from Christ and the church. Now friends, that is of huge importance. And it has the potential to be absolutely liberating and life transforming today. Especially for those of us in this congregation who came from difficult, broken, or even dysfunctional family backgrounds. So listen up. If you grew up in an unhappy or a dysfunctional home, how do you know what it means to be a godly husband? Or a godly wife? If your father was not present, or if your father was not good, or if he was not faithful, where can you learn as a man how to treat a woman? Or where can you learn as a woman how to be with a man? You may say, well Jesus Christ is my model for all of life, but of course Jesus was never married, so where can I look to learn about this? Well, we are learning here that Jesus Christ has a bride. And his bride is the church. And the apostle is specifically saying, and he’s writing to these folks in Ephesus. This was one of the most pagan, debauched societies out of which people were wonderfully converted. And here are all these folks who have come from dysfunctional backgrounds. And they’re new Christians. And they’re bringing all this baggage with them. And the apostle says, now here’s how you can learn to be a godly husband. You’ve never seen it modeled in a home in your childhood. But here is where you can look to see what it means to be a godly husband. You look at Christ. And you look at how he relates to the church. And you’ll begin to discover it there. This is wonderfully liberating. This is wonderfully redemptive. You know, just to stay with this a moment longer, because it’s so important. I’ve often had conversations, and maybe you have too. Maybe you’ve said this. But a person has said, you know, I didn’t have a good father. And so I can’t relate to God as father. Most of us will have heard someone say that. And many of us perhaps may have said it ourselves. I didn’t have a good father. And so how can I relate to God as father? Listen, nobody knows God by having a good father. You don’t come to know God by having a good family background. Nobody comes to know God by having a good father. No, you find out what a good father is by coming to know God. So don’t get stuck on this one by putting the whole thing the wrong way around. Get to know God, and you will discover what a good father is. Get to know Christ, and you will discover what a good husband is. And friends, even if you had a good and a stable home background, and your father and your mother loved each other well, even then, the place to begin in learning what it means to be a godly husband is not simply in trying to do a carbon copy of your parents. If you do that, you’ll just bring in all kinds of cultural stuff, and all kinds of stuff from an earlier generation or an earlier century, and your wife or your husband may not particularly thank you for doing that. So while there may be some things you learn from there, you don’t start from there. Where do you start from? You look at Christ. In any culture, in any century, he transcends everything else and is wonderfully redemptive, whatever background we may come from, good or bad. What he’s saying is this. See it. Husbands, think deeply about Christ in the church. Learn to know Christ, and then you will discover what kind of husband God is calling you to be, because Christ’s love for the church gives you the shape, it gives you the template, it gives you the pattern of what it means for you to love your wife well. The power of knowing Christ. The redemptive power of knowing Christ. Now, let’s look at this together then. Do you have your Bible open? How does Christ love the church? Look at what he says, verse 25. Christ gave himself for the church. Verse 25. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Gave himself. Here’s Christ in heaven, and he’s at the right hand of God the Father, and he loves the church, and he gives himself up for her. He says, in effect, I am ready to pay any price. I am ready to endure any pain in order to do her good. I am ready to take all these joys that are mine by right and to place them on hold. I am prepared to take all that I find joy in here and to give it up in order that I may serve her. And he does this when there is no love coming back in return. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He endured. He suffered. And he forgave. And the apostle says, now husbands, you love your wife like Christ loves the church. And if you are hearing that at all, you will feel almost yourself going weak at the knees and saying, Lord Jesus Christ, I need you if I am going to do that. I cannot do this in my own strength. I need a love that is bigger than the love in this heart. I need your spirit within me. I need the very life that you lived to come and to be in me. You will feel yourself, if you hear this today, finding a reason to come humbly and penitently and with faith to Jesus Christ and to embrace him all over again or perhaps for the very first time and to say, I need you, Lord Jesus, to make me the husband you are calling me to be. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and today’s message called The Bride and it’s all about Christ’s union with the church in the series of What is the Church and Why Does It Matter? And today we’ve been looking at Ephesians chapter 5 and verses 25 to 33. And if you may be tuned in late or if you missed any of our previous messages in the series, you can catch up or go back and listen again online. Come to our website, openthebible.org.uk. You can also find our messages as podcasts. Go to your favourite podcast site, search for Open the Bible UK and subscribe to the podcast to receive regular updates. Back to the message now, here’s Colin. Then secondly, notice that here’s how Christ loves the church. He leads the church. It’s part of his love. Verse 23, Christ is the head of the church, of which he is the saviour. What that means is very simply that Christ is always the one who takes the initiative with the church. He’s always up to something good on behalf of his bride, the church. You look at the history of revivals and you find it’s very clear that the church never knows what Jesus Christ is going to do next. At moments of extraordinary danger and extraordinary difficulty, Christ moves in ways that surprise his church and bring great joy. Let me ask this question. What will Jesus Christ do in the orchard in the next year? Does anyone know? I don’t. He will bless us. We know he’s up to something good, but precisely how and where and when and in what ways his blessing will come in this congregation, not one of us can tell. It’s known to him. And he will surprise us with joy in more ways than we could ever begin to imagine. In the next year, he may sweep all of us up into the joy of his everlasting home. Do you know that he will not do that in the next year? Now, husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the church. You see, the husband has the responsibility to be the innovator, the initiative taker, the one who brings the element of surprise and joy into the home and into the marriage. God calls the husband to make sure that this marriage does not become dull or stale or predictable or boring. I ask you very simply, as you think about how Christ loves the church, when did you last do something that completely surprised your wife with joy? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the church. Third, Christ nourishes the church. Verse 29, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and he cares for it just as Christ does the church. And the point here is very simple, and you notice that he’s actually using two pictures here, the body and the bride being brought together, and he’s saying here, now look, all of you look after your own body. We all do this. You feed your body, you nourish it, you protect it, and you build your body up. Now, the church is the body of Christ, and he looks after his own body too. He feeds the church, he nourishes the church. He does that through the word, and he does it around the table, and he protects the church, and he builds the church up. The attention and the affection of the Lord Jesus Christ is constantly directed towards the church. He always knows what she needs. He always sees what she can become. He always loves her as she is. And the apostle says, now husbands, you love your wives as Christ loved the church. Now, we’ve just scraped the surface. But do you see how the more you come to know this Lord Jesus Christ, and the more you grasp what his love for the church really looks like, the more you’re going to discover what it really means to be a godly husband? And are you seeing that you really can’t do this without Jesus Christ, and that you need him in every way? And can you see that whatever the background you came from, and however difficult and dysfunctional it was, knowing Christ is going to transform the whole thing as you learn what it is to walk with him and have his life within you. See the hope of that? See the path of that? Well, all of this that the Lord Jesus Christ has done and is doing for the church is present tense. Then there’s one more thing here that we’re told that is in the future. Christ will present the church to himself, verse 27, and this too is part of his love. He will present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. The church, as we saw last week, doesn’t always look so attractive right now. But what we’re being told here is that the church as the bride of Christ has the most glorious, glorious future. And to say we are the bride of Christ is the greatest privilege we have in this world. Michael Griffiths, who was the president of the school where I studied some years ago, wrote a book about the church with what I think is a brilliant title. He called his book about the church Cinderella with Amnesia. That is a brilliant title. Cinderella with Amnesia. Now you remember the story of Cinderella. She dances with the prince. His heart is captivated. She has to leave before midnight. And as she runs from the ballroom, she leaves behind a shoe. And the prince goes looking for the woman that he loves and wants to bring her to the palace. And so he sends out the servants with this shoe and they are to try it on the foot of every maiden in the land and when the one is found on whom the shoe fits, she is to be brought to the palace. Beautiful, timeless story. Now picture Cinderella sitting at home. And she is dressed in rags. She is despised by the ugly sisters. She is oppressed by the wicked stepmother. But her destiny is a life of joy and love with the prince in the palace. That is a great picture of the church. Sometimes she looks a bit ragged in this world. Worn. There are some ugly brothers and sisters who despise her and count her as of little value. In some parts of the world, there is a wicked stepmother who persecutes her and imprisons her leaders. But Christ loves the church. Christ loves the church. And he will bring her to his home. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and the message, The Bride, part of our series, What is the church and why does it matter? And this time we’ve been hearing about how Christ loves the church. Next time it’s about how we love the church. So I hope you’ll make a point of tuning in for that. And if you ever miss one of our messages or if you want to go back and listen again, you can always do that by going online. Come to our website, openthebible.org.uk and you can stream any of the previously broadcast messages there. You can also find us as a podcast. Go to your favourite podcast site and search for Open the Bible UK. Open the Bible is supported entirely by donations from our listeners and we’re very grateful for that. And if that’s something you haven’t done up till now but you feel you’d like to begin doing it, we have an offer for you this month. If you’re able to set up a new donation in respect of Open the Bible for the amount of £5 per month or more, we’d love to send you a book of prayers. It’s called Valley of Vision. And Colin, how might we benefit from reading this book? Well, I think this is a book that will really help folks to pray. And you know, as a pastor over the years, I’ve found that that is a question that people want to ask more than any other. I’ve quite often over the years just said to people when there’s opportunity for an open conversation, hey, what do you want to talk about? And I’ve given some suggestions and the most frequent question that I get asked is, can we talk about prayer? People want to know how to grow in our prayer lives. And the Valley of Vision is a collection of prayers that has come down through the centuries that are really, really helpful for stimulating prayer. They’re organised according to different parts of prayer, worship and praise, asking and interceding, and also confessing. And just the richness with which they’re written. So, I mean, here, for example, are a couple of lines out of one of the prayers for purification. Deliver me, O God, from attachment to things unclean, from wrong associations, from the predominance of evil passions, from the sugar of sin, as well as its gall. Boy, now that would just make you think, wouldn’t it? There’s a sugar in sin, as well as a gall, and we need delivered from both. Well, you know, that’s just picking one little phrase out of this. It’s so rich. As you read through these prayers, you’ll find your own heart to be stirred and your own prayers to be stimulated. I find this book immensely helpful. It has helped Christians for generations and I think it will be immensely helpful to you. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of this book as a way of saying thank you for setting up a new donation in respect of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more. Full details of this offer on our website, openthebible.org.uk. For Open the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick and I hope you’ll be able to join us again very soon. To you share Jesus’ love for the Church? Find out next time on Open the Bible.