Genesis 24 - Conclusion

Read 1 Corinthians 2, Ephesians 5:31-32, John 6:38, Luke 22:42, Titus 2, & Hebrews 8 & 9

What happens when something or someone is misrepresented? You don't actually get a true picture of that thing or that person. What we have considered in this study is that marriage is a worldly shadow of a heavenly reality. As it is designed by God, it is to represent what God designed it to represent. Marriage is not an end in itself. The goal is not just to get married, stay married, and die. Although, in our culture that is still rare. We are designed by God to live within an order and structure that represents the New Covenant. Ephesians 5 tells us to leave and cleave. Christ modeled this for us as He left the Father and cleaves to the Church. And the cleaving is not temporal. As you sit with your spouse and cleave, the only way that you could ever have any right to leave is if Christ abandons His bride...the church. To say it another way... As long as Christ cleaves to His bride, you cleave to yours. Why? Because if you don't, you are misrepresenting the unbreakable covenant-keeping love that Christ has for His bride.
In John 6:38, Jesus says, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me." So if husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church they must die to themselves and die to their own will, and submit, like Christ, to the will of the Father. And the will of the Father is that you sacrifice your selfishness for the well-being of your bride, not because she has earned it or deserves it, but because GOD TELLS YOU TO...and why did He tell you to? Because you are representing the "groom part" of HIS COVENANT LOVE! Consider. if I was to ask you why you love your wife, would you have anything more to say than, "Well, she does this and says that..."? Would any part of your answer be that God tells you to... that it is the will of the Father for you to love her? If not, I would submit that you are not loving your wife in the robust manner by which you were designed... because a robust love represents the New Covenant! And the world is watching...
So if someone asks me, "why do you love your wife", a good answer would be, "because God tells me to. God modeled this love in the New Covenant that exists in Christ, so just like Christ loves the church by the will of the Father, I will love my bride, by the will of the Father."
Wives, in Titus 2 you are called to be trained to love your husband and children. This goes far beyond loving them just because your Husband stirred your emotions or your child said something sweet and smiled at you. And why? Because you are representing the "bride part" of the New Covenant love. Ravi Zacharias states "The will is that faculty which can only be tested when pain is as much a part of its choice as pleasure is... Nothing brings harmony more than embracing the will of God. Nothing brings fragmentation more than turning away from the will of God. Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father." There will be times when we have to choose pain, just like Christ did. If not, it is those times that we will run away.
As Christ embraced the will of the Father, He ushered in a NEW COVENANT. As you embrace the will of the Father, you are representing that New Covenant. In Matthew 22, God reminds us that marriage on earth is temporal, and when you die it is over. So death separates you from the love of your spouse. But in Romans 8, we are reminded ("we" being the bride of Christ)... "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through HIM WHO LOVED US". So love between a husband and a wife is separated by death, but NOT EVEN DEATH can separate us (the BRIDE) from the love of Christ. So our aim is to love in such a way that we are able to communicate that hidden and secret wisdom of God. Our aim is to rightly represent in our spark and shadow of a life, the eternal,, beautiful, rich truth that the love of Christ is FOREVER!!! From our marriages, from our community of faith, our church, in the midst of our conflicts, on the mountain tops, and in the deep valleys, we want to cry out to a lost and dying world and boldly proclaim, "The love of Christ is forever! He will never forsake you! RUN TO HIM!!!"