Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Marriage as Ministry Power

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Whether you’re single, married, widowed, or divorced, you can immediately apply Scripture’s teachings about marriage to your life. According to the Scripture, marriage is a divine invention. It stands apart from other human institutions because it didn’t evolve out of human thinking. And the basic principles for marriage that are laid out in Ephesians 5 are critical to our understanding of what God says marriage is. We’ll look now at the first of these basic principles: Self-centeredness is the main enemy of any marriage. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 18, 1991. Series: Marriage. Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33. Today's podcast episode is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. The power of marriage is that it is a reflection of the Gospel. Today Tim Keller explores how marriage can help us more deeply understand Christ's love for us and how Christ's love for us can completely transform our marriages. Our preaching a little sermon series on marriage and we did immortal invisible. God only wise at our wedding. That was our hymn on the way in. On the way out it was nobody knows the trouble I've seen. So anyway.

But on the way in, we sang immortal, oh, a stand, immortal and visible. God only wives. So, as you know, we're going through the book of Ephesians, and instead of really a series of servants, I don't know when I started these, but instead of a series of servants on Ephesians, what it really is is a series of series on Ephesians, because what you get to a particular set of verses and you see it's on a new subject,

and what we try to do is, it's something we're not doing, obviously, in the morning services, because the morning services have a slightly different focus. What I'm doing is I'm trying to show you, when you take a look at a small number of verses on a subject that there's a tremendous amount that can be drawn out of there.

So we try to go through in a more, not a totally, but a more comprehensive and exhaustive way looking at that subject. Now we come to the classic, maybe the Locus classicus, the classic passage in the whole Bible on marriage. It's Ephesians chapter 5, and I'm going to start reading from verses 21 down to verse 32. It's maybe the most famous, it's certainly probably the longest and the medias passage there is in the scripture on how God understands marriage. We're going to read that and on tonight we will kind of even overview some basic principles

as we often do when we begin and then we're going to go to the Lord's table and ask Him to meet with us. And you don't have to worry about covering all the territory on the first night because as you know, I never ever do. Let's take a look at Ephesians 5, though, and I'll read verses 21 to 32. Familiar, famous, as well-deserved. I'm going to start with verse 21 though. Submit to one another. Out of reverence for Christ,

why submit to your husbands as to the Lord for the husband as the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church? The church is his body, of which he is the Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also why I should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. To make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but

holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife

as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's word. And what a lot there is to look at. And lots of explosive controversial issues too, and none of which, as usual, we will touch on immediately, not least tonight. What I do wanna suggest to you though,

is a thought or two about why we're covering the subject of marriage when such a good number of you are not. Why do that? Isn't that kind of dangerous? You know, you want to go out and immediately apply the text to your life on Monday. And many of your cases that would be rash. Here's some reasons why we study this. Even though such a large number of you aren't married. Number one, you're supposed to study God's Word, and you're supposed to learn what He says because it's there.

It's always a danger to go to what you consider the relevant parts of the Scripture. But are you so wise as to know what's the relevant parts of the Scripture? That's why you need to just read the Bible systematically, instead of going after those parts that you think relate to you. How do you know it relates to you? Unless you read the whole thing.

The Bible is wiser than you are. So fill to your life through its wisdom rather than filtering it through yours. So we're studying because you come to it. But two, from what I can understand, there's plenty of you who are single who would consider marriage and are considering it and would like to be. From what I can understand, there's plenty of you who are single who would consider marriage and are considering it and would like to be. But frankly, inordinate fears of marriage, inordinate longing for marriage, and therefore inordinate resentment over not being married, or inordinate romanticizing of marriage

are all things that cloud your understanding, and therefore when you try to think about the future, when you try to look at a person to say, do I want to marry this person, unless you are able to think clearly about what marriage is, unless you're able to look at people through the lens of the scripture, so the lens of your own fears and your own romanticism and your own anger, you're not going to be able to make intelligent decisions about your future regarding marriage at all. It's very, very critical. I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can apply this teaching on Monday.

You can begin to apply it immediately, not by getting married, but by beginning to think about your future through the lens of the scripture, instead of through your own past, through your own experiences. Thirdly, a lot of you have been divorced. That's you're not married, but you've been divorced. Here's a greater danger. You may have a more distorted understanding of marriage. I'm sure you'll agree with this. You may have a more distorted understanding of marriage than people who never have been married. And the reason for that is because as we're going to see in a moment,

one of the principles of marriage is marriage was a way that God invented for us to deal with our loneliness. A lot of people say you shouldn't get married just because you're lonely, Adam did. We'll see. That's why Adam got married. It's not good that Adam should be lonely, God said. And so he got a married. Now, marriage is supposed to be actually a deep consolation for loneliness, but many of you know that it's your far more lonely in a bad marriage than you are in a no marriage. And because of that, you may have a more distorted understanding of what marriage is, even then somebody who never has been married.

And you may too be thinking of your own future through the lens of your memories rather than the lens of the scripture. Therefore, it really is important, though it may seem to be painful, to saturate your thinking and what the scripture says about it. And of course, there are plenty of you who are married and can apply this in the most obvious and most practical ways immediately. So now let's take a look at it. And tonight what I want to do is lay out, let me think here, four, I don't know, that might be a little bit over, I might be overreaching myself.

Four things, four basic principles for marriage that you do see here, that are laid out here, that I'd like to talk about as being very critical to our understanding of what God says marriage is. Marriage, contrary to a lot of people say, is not something that a bunch of people are on a cave fire and the late Bronze Age suddenly fought up. They didn't say, I got an idea. You know, according to the scripture, marriage is a divine invention. There's basically three human

institutions that stand completely apart from others because they are not, they didn't evolve out of human thinking. They're not anthropological actually and their sources, their theological. That's the family, that's the church, and that's the state. There's nothing in the Bible about schools or how schools ought to run. There's nothing in the Bible about community centers, nothing in the Bible about schools or how schools ought to run. There's nothing in the Bible about community centers and nothing in the Bible about art galleries. There's nothing in the Bible. There's all sorts of great human institutions in the Bible.

It doesn't say anything about why. The Bible doesn't regulate them. Why? Because you see, God didn't invent them. But God invented marriage. And when you enter into marriage, you enter in underneath his authority whether you will or not. So let's take a look and see these basic four principles and then we're going to go to the Lord's table and say, oh Lord help me. Okay, number one. The first principle is actually in the verse that we see it

because of the verse 21 and how it stands in proximity to the rest of the passage. Verse 21 says, submit to one another out of reference for Christ. Do you remember that the passage before this passage on marriage was about how to be filled with a spirit? We spent a number of weeks on that. And then it tells us a person who's filled with a spirit has these certain characteristics.

And the last of the characteristics mention is in verse 21. There's many things that are going to be the characteristics of a person filled with the Spirit. This is the last one. Now most any commentator on the Ephesians will tell you, it's very clear that Paul is not artificially but very organically moving from this phrase, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ into these next examples of relationships. In marriage between husband and wife, in the family between parent and child, and then lastly, in the workplace between employer

and employee, all of them are outworkings of this principle. The principle is submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And you can't overlook that Paul is saying that this is an assumption. Paul assumes if you're going to have a marriage that sings, that there is already a spirit-generated ability for you to serve, to take yourself out of the center, to put the needs of other people ahead of yours. The first principle is self-centeredness is the main problem in any marriage. Self-centeredness is the main enemy of any marriage.

The ability to submit to another person is the Holy Spirit of God. It is impossible for somebody who is not Spirit-filled. And Paul is assuming a Spirit-filled humility and ability to serve another person and get out of being absorbed by your own problems and needs. He is assuming that as a basis for everything else he says about marriage. And I'll think of that. So the first principle, I'll give me a moment here to elaborate it, but I'm just telling you what it is. The first principle is that self-sertness is the main cancer, the main enemy, the main problem in any marriage.

It's the most foundational problem because it's the foundation for any kind of decent marriage. You know, there's a number of, I've had a number of experiences to remind myself of this lately. A lot of people say, hi, you had a great vacation, right? Right. I just tell them, I had a great vacation because I did. I don't want to tell you what I actually did because they won't understand why it was such a great vacation and it goes to show you that it changes good as a rest. I spent one week at a beach unlike Erie in a beach cottage with my wife's family, 12 children, 12 children. I spent an entire week in North Carolina with another family, all in one beach cottage with six children under the same roof. Now,

somebody says that's a vacation, it's a change as good as a rest, you see. But during that time, I learned this, that the ability to give yourself to another person, the ability to give up your rights, the ability to serve others interests ahead of your own, the ability to submit your own concerns for the good of somebody else, the ability to defer your desires, to help another person reach their desires, is not instinctive. There is nothing more unnatural than that. Paul is saying

that it is impossible unless the Spirit of God generates and helps you into a non-self-centered life for you to have a happy marriage. And it doesn't matter, by the way, this doesn't mean, by the way, this doesn't mean that only Christians can have happy marriages. That's another subject. But what it is saying is if a person who's not a Christian has a happy marriage, they're being helped by God, they just may not know it. Because it's impossible for you to live a non-self centered life apart from his help. And therefore, at the root of any marriage problems,

you better look for self-centeredness to be the key. The ability to submit in verse 21 is from the spirit because the word submit is very strong. All right, now I'm not talking at all about why I've submitted into their husbands, which is what it says in the next verse, across that bridge, and fall on that grenade when I come to it. But tonight, that's tonight what I'm talking about,

at verse 21, the word submit is a military word, and it really, it was usually used in Greek to talk about submitting to an officer, a soldier submitting to an officer, why? Because when you join the military, you lose a tremendous amount of control over your schedule. He lose a tremendous amount of control over when you're going to take a holiday and when you're going to eat and what you're going to eat. Why? Because in order to be part of a whole, in order to be in concert, in order to become part of a greater unity,

in order to act as a body, you have to defer. A whole lot of your decisions and a whole lot of your wishes and a whole lot of your desires you have to. Paul actually, don't forget, Paul is not talking only about marriage. He is saying that this ability to enter into a body and no longer choose your own rights first to serve and put the good of the whole over your own good is not something that is instinctive, it's not something that's natural. And it's something that is absolutely assumed as the foundation, Paul says, here of marriage. Let me put it another way. And this is, again, now, especially those of you who are married right now, you really

need to be thinking kind of carefully about this at this point. When we say that marriage is, that self-centeredness is the most fundamental thing. I'm not just talking about marriage. This is a big debate right now. Whenever you talk to someone who's been deeply wounded and a lot of people have been deeply wounded, I'm just reading about a woman who spent her childhood with a mother. And this isn't the most horrible thing you've ever read or heard, but it seemed horrible enough that when her mother wanted to punish her she would lock her in a closet for two days and feed her and make her sleep in there and make her stay in there and feed

her, you know, it wasn't that she deprived of your food but that was a locker in a closet. That's pretty bad. That's not burning her with cigarette butts or any of those kinds of horror stories, that's pretty bad. And she grew up a wounded person, and that makes sense. And whenever you talk to someone, there's been really wounded by significant others in their lives. You'll notice two things about them.

One is, they have really been oppressed. They have really been mistreated. They've been treated unjustly. They are victims of that kind of injustice and oppression. You'll also notice something else, that they are usually enormously self-centered. That means they're so absorbed in their own problems, they really can't think of other people, or if they do think of other people, they do it in a completely obsessive way, so that they're not really meeting the needs of other people, but they're meeting their own needs by burning themselves out

meeting other people's needs. The fact is, that people who are wounded are also very absorbed. They don't notice what's going on around them usually. They're too absorbed in their own needs to worry about anybody else. They cannot defer. They cannot submit to others out of reverence. They can't do it. The real question is, and this is a very big issue, what do you do with a person like that? One understanding of humanity assumes that all people are naturally good and that

if a person is self-centered, it's because they have been wounded. And therefore, you don't challenge them at all. You just figure that these people need to have their self-esteem developed. They shouldn't be challenged. They basically need to have all pressure taken off of them. They need to take care of themselves. They need to be good to themselves. They need to pamper themselves. But that assumes, and there's a lot of books like that, are they not? That assumes that self-centeredness isn't natural. And that if you're self-centered, you've been abused.

That assumes it. That's a religious assumption. Nobody can prove that about human nature. That's a belief. That's an article of faith and is actually no religion in the world that teaches that except the self-made religions of our modern time. The other approach, and this is the Christian approach, is to say, that as badly one as that person has been, their self-centeredness has been aggravated by their mistreatment.

It's been aggravated terribly. It has reached up like a cloud to smoke them and yet to choke them. It's like a cloud of smoke that chokes them. And yet, their self-centeredness was prior to their woundedness. And therefore, they have to be dealt with extremely gently. They also have to be challenged to see that their self-centeredness is not something that has been caused by people outside of them. It's just been aggravated. They have to do something about it. Otherwise, it's going to be miserable forever. There's really only, most of you know this scenario.

When you first get married, you're generally because you like the other person. I mean, unless it was an arranged marriage or something like that, or the person's a billionaire in 98 years old. But by and large, you marry somebody because you just think they're wonderful. But as soon as you get married within a year or two, you begin to find this process going on, you begin to see how selfish they really are. You see more and more of it, you see more and more

of it, and the same, here's another thing happens at the same time. They begin to tell you about how selfish they think you are. And there's a third thing that happens, and that is that you don't see that your own selfishness is anywhere near as bad as the other persons. And the reason for that is you sit there and you say, well, yeah, that's true, I do that, I know, I do that, but you just don't understand. And so both of you, this is inevitable. What'll happen is you'll both see the other person's selfishness and you'll be hearing about your own selfishness

and you're sure the other person's selfishness is worse than yours. That's going to happen. What happens when it happens? Well, you can go two ways. One is you can decide that your woundedness is more fundamental than your self-centeredness and decide unless this person sees the problems I have and takes care of me in all this way, nothing is going to work.

And of course, they're not going to do that if they're thinking the same way about you. And so what usually happens, or at least in many marriages, is an emotional distance starts to develop. What you do is you bargain with the other person, and you say, I'll tell you what. Now you don't do this out loud, but you basically say, you don't talk me about that and I won't talk you about that. And you don't talk me about that and I won't talk you about that. And they may be actually looking pretty happy, we marry after 40 years, but when you have the anniversary and have to kiss

for the photographer, it'll be forced. Now there's the other thing you can do and that is you can decide as a Christian, the verse 21 is there, and you can decide as this process begins that you are going to determine to see your own selfishness as more important is more serious than the other person, that you are going to treat your own flaws as more serious, that you are going to act upon the selfishness

that's revealed to you or reported to you regardless of what the other person is doing. You're going to treat your own self-centeredness as more important, more serious, and you're going to treat the knees the other person as more important, and you make that determination. And when two people do that at once, you have the possibility of a truly great marriage, a truly great marriage. Two people who see self-centeredness, my self-centeredness is the main problem in this marriage. Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships

there is, but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In the meaning of marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage, whether you're single, considering marriage, or someone who's been married a long time, the meaning of marriage will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. The meaning of marriage is our thank you for your gift to

help Gospel in life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now frankly there's actually a third possibility. One is to refuse to see that. The second is to both do. The third is that one of you does it and one of you doesn't. And you know ordinarily what that means is as time goes on there's not an immediate response from the other person. If you are the only one that decides, my selfishness is the thing I'm going to work on. You will find as time goes on the other person will soften and the other person will be

easier for that other person to admit their false because you're not always talking about them. Especially if it's the man. Because it's very, very difficult for men to admit, you know, even when you know you got your red hand and you're just not going to say. So the point is even if only one person decides to do that, even if one person says self-centeredness is the problem, the main problem of my marriage, not my past, not my wounds, not my needs, and not this other person what they're doing

to me, I'm going to work on my selfishness. If both of you do that, the possibilities are endless. If one of you does that, possibilities are very great. Do you understand that? Do you see that? In passing, all I can say is that I get very uncomfortable with both the kind of, well, I can't get into that tonight. The conservative approach to marriage is the basic problem in bad marriages is that the two people need to submit to their roles. Husbands need to be head. Why does it need to submit? That's the basic problem. And that can be a problem, by the way. We'll talk about that later. But if the main problem is self-centeredness, then pushing the roles first might actually encourage self-centeredness. It may encourage

people to take advantage of each other, it may encourage it, isn't it, right? But then there's another side. There's a secular approach to marriage. It says, the real problem in marriage is that you have to get that other person to recognize your potential to develop your potential. You can't let that other person trample all over you. You have got to realize that yourself. You've got to develop yourself in this marriage. If that other person will do it, you've got to negotiate, and if that other person will negotiate, you've got to get out.

And if the basic problem in marriage is self-centeredness, that actually may be a problem. And that may, see, as we can talk later on, divorce is something that God allows in circumstances that he outlines. And yet if the main problem is self-centeredness, don't you think that all that emphasis on self-development can actually play into the hands of it?

Now, if we're, the Christian principle here is that spirit-generated selflessness, you know, we've talked about this before, not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. You know, taking your mind off yourself and realizing that in Christ, your needs are going to be met and are being met

so that you don't look at other person as God and your Savior. A person who has the gospel in their blood can turn around and say, my selfishness is the main problem here. I'm gonna work on that and that's the key to everything. Now, let me tell you what the other three principles are but I'm gonna have to be even more brief because I really do want to Bring you the table big you see already you've got things to work on if you're married The self-absorption the self-centeredness the self-pity that When somebody points out you when your spouse points out your selfishness and you say but you don't understand

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. You see, that's a cancer. I said that before. It reminds me of the place where God looks at Cain, whose full of self-pity in Genesis 4, and he says, Cain, sin is crouching at the door, it's desire is for you, but you must master it. There's the principle of self in your life, it's crouching at the door, it wants to have you, it wants to pounce on you, it wants to devour you, it's up to you to do something about it God says. Deny yourself, to find yourself, lose yourself, to find yourself, the heart of

the gospel. I'll just tell you what these other three principles are, and we're going to be opening them up. What's great is that near the end of the chapter, Paul grounds what he tells us about marriage into Genesis. And there's the Locust Classical of Genesis, the classical text of on marriage in Genesis, is he made the male and female, and for this reason, a man shall leave his father and cleave unto his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh. Now a lot of you are gonna be going to weddings soon. There's a lot of weddings going on, and some of them I'm able to get to and do, and some of them I can can I'm very sorry about that That's the the glory of a growing and burgeoning ministry is Got a dark side to it as well, and that's part of it But and if you get around you're gonna hear me say things like this in the weddings

This this little locust classicist text tells you three things about marriage I'll just name right now the first thing is that the essence of marriage is a covenant, the essence of marriage is a contract. A man shall cleave to his wife. The word cleave literally means to be glued to, and it means to take a vow. What's the essence of marriage? Some people say feelings.

Feelings of affection. You're all just on TV the night I saw somebody said, come on honey, let's get married. She says, I don't need a piece of paper to tell you that I love you. I love you. Who needs marriage? She completely misunderstands what the essence of marriage is. What do you mean, feelings can't be the essence of marriage. My dog in love you have wonderful feelings that they're not married to you. Some people say, well, having children is the essence of marriage. You know rats and mice and rabbits do a wonderful job of that and they don't need marriage either. Some people say sex is the essence of marriage. It's

not because you see if sex was the essence of marriage or feelings of the essence of marriage or having babies' essence of marriage, then marriage could come and go. It would be a moment to moment thing. The essence of marriage is a promise. And when somebody says, I don't need a piece of paper to declare my love for you, I don't need to be married. You don't know what you're talking about. Because you see, when you get married, you're not saying how you feel now. Listen to the marriage vows. You're not saying anything about your present. You're not saying anything about your feeling state. What do you say when you get married? You say, I promise, you don't say, I love you, I cherish you, I want to give myself to you.

You don't say that. You say, I promise to be loving, I promise to be tender, I promise to be affectionate, I promise to be caring, I promise to be world, I promise to be faithful, under any conditions till we die. You're not saying anything about your present, you're not saying anything about your feelings, you're talking about the future. The essence of marriage is a promise, and a promise means you're making a appointment with yourself in the future, and you say, ten years from now I'll be there, twenty years from now I'll be there. I'll arrange my schedule, so I'll be there. That's what it means, you make an appointment with yourself in their future. The essence of marriage is a promise. Okay, secondly, the purpose of marriage is companionship. You notice it leaves it out in his quote. When he quotes from Genesis 2, he says, for this reason a man shall cleave to us, you know, leave his father more than cleave to his wife. What for this reason? What reason?

Well, if you go back to Genesis 2, you'll see that the reason is that he made the male and female. And this gets in to a subject we'll go into greater detail later. But when Adam was made a male, everything that Adam touches and looks at is good. And then you get to the strange spot in Genesis 2, where it says that Adam could not find a companion.

And that's where God says it is not good. Everything else in the book of Genesis is benediction. It was good and it was good. And it was good. All the way through the early parts of the verses. And then suddenly it was not good, malediction, a bad word. It was not good that Adam would be alone. It's clear that God created

us with design deficits. He created us to need companionship and to need a particular kind of companionship. They can only be generated between two different genders. Okay, now I know I'm opening lots of doors but I'm not going into them tonight. The key thing is, the key thing is, marriage was built for companionship. Marriage was built for companionship. And that means the essence of what it means to be married. We said was the vow, the purpose of what it means to be married, the purpose of the vow, is a disperse and be your best friend.

Listen, technically, if you're married, and you committed sexual adulterer with somebody else, you've technically broken your marriage vow. But listen to me, if you've got somebody else of a different gender who is a better friend than your spouse, to whom you can talk and share, and speak and open, and feel like I can pour myself out to that person, they understand me, I feel supported and lifted up and understood. If you enter into that kind of relationship,

it's somebody else of a different gender becomes a better friend in your spouse, you substantially, you substantially frustrated the very purpose of your marriage. That's essential, that's substantial intimacy. That's substantial unfaithness, by the way, if you actually go ahead and cultivate that kind of relationship. My wife and I know that right now, we know that adultery, of course, is technically the grounds for divorce and adultery would be the technical breaking of our covenant. But we also know that if some other person of the opposite gender became a better friend than our spouse. At that point, we would already be unfaithful to ourselves. We know that. Everybody knows that.

Instinctively, though you may not know it intellectually. Now, serious, of course, because a lot of times you don't get married for companionship. The way you choose who you're going to date isn't for companionship. You walk in a new room, you see 10 people in the other gender, seven of them don't look nice. You go for the three most attractive ones and then they're the ones that attract you and if one of them will date you and you get into an involved eventually see if you could turn them into a friend. It could be the people who are most likely to be your best friends, you've already ruled out of your life because they're too tall or too short or too fat or too skinny.

If the purpose of marriage, if the thing that really makes a marriage a marriage, if the thing that really is really sensual is that somebody who understands you, who looks into the center of your life and doesn't own your life, but says, wow, you're going about your dating anyway all wrong. And as a result of that, you get into a marriage and his person isn't somebody that's really going to be your best friend. What happens in most situations, it's not dastardly, what you do is you find somebody the same gender who the far better friend than your spouse.

Even that's kind of dangerous, but it's not the same thing. Because you don't look for that. The essence of marriage is a promise, but the purpose of marriage is companionship. For this reason, because we need companionship, because we're alone, because we need this kind of deep sharing and deep intimacy and deep communication. A man shall leave his father, mother, and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. At last principle is the priority of marriage. This says, I'm going to leave everything else and cleave to his wife. No one else, not your father, not your mother.

No one else can have a prior priority over your spouse. Marriage has got to be number one. Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. Marriage is the vortex of your life. It has that power. If everything around you, you've heard me say this, if you come to a wedding, if everything around you is a mess and weakness and yet your marriage is strong, it doesn't matter, you move out into the world in strength. And if everything around you is strong and successful, but your marriage is a wreck,

it doesn't matter, you move out into the world in weakness. It has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. It should have priority in your life. Nothing's more important than that relationship. Nothing is more important than that person. God bill it that way, and if you get into marriage and you act under any other kind of auspices or principles, you will wreck your life.

Now look, whether you're married or not, we're coming to the table. And we see that it's our pride and our self-centeredness, which can only be dealt with through the gospel, because the gospel is that you're more wicked than you ever dared believe, but you're more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope, right? And that is what does a one, two on your ego. The person who thinks too much of himself, you're more wicked than you ever dared believe. But the person who thinks too little of him or herself, you're more loved than you ever dared hope. The two kinds of self-centeredness, I'm so wonderful, or I'm so awful. Both of which make it impossible for you to serve other people are destroyed at the foot of the cross.

You're leveled. You want to deal with the problem? You want to deal with the problem? Come to him now. Let's pray. Father, we're going to come to the table and we're going to ask that you would enable us as we confess our sins to meet you and to hear you say to us, I will restore you. I will forgive you. I will renew you. I will turn you in to a friend. I will turn you in to someone who can love and be loved. That's what we ask now. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller.

If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel Unlife Monthly Partner. Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelunlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 1991. The sermons and talks you here on the Gospel Unlife Podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.