1. "How can the beauty of marriage last? I'd like us to consider this morning that the key to making beauty and marriage last is to remember that marriage doesn't last."

2. "For the beauty of a marriage to last, it must reach into what comes after it. It must borrow something from eternity."

3. "If you want to make an eternal dent in the universe, you don't invent an iPhone. You love, because love never ends."

4. "When marriage is a struggle and you feel like the love you show is just pouring down a black hole, remember that God sees and that love's effect endures. Marriage is love's proving ground and the love it proves will last forever, even when that marriage is a distant memory."

5. "You need to understand that everything in marriage, what seems good, what seems bad, is custom made by God for your good. Once you get married, it's all in the plus category."

6. "It's like the good and the bad are sitting on a teeter-totter, but that fulcrum, the pivot point, rests somewhere beyond the horizon."

7. "We don't show grace merely because that's what gives us a peaceful and sweet marriage. The motivation to show grace cannot come from what it produces within a marriage. It must flow from beyond marriage."

8. "Marriage isn't like a windshield that works best when it's as transparent as possible. But neither is it like stained glass. Marriage is like a telescope through which we see the grace of God. It brings it up close. It makes it something tangible. But the point ultimately isn't the telescope. It's the stars we want to see through it."

9. "A relationship that is partly transactional feels wholly transactional. Just picture a parent whose affection is contingent on good grades. There is grace in the relationship—a lot of it—but because some of the relationship is transactional, the whole thing feels transactional. Same in marriage, same with God."

10. "Marriage ends. Love never ends. And the beauty of marriage is found in how it draws on, reflects, and builds into love that never ends."

Observation Questions

1. In 1 Corinthians 13:8, what does Paul say will happen to prophecies, tongues, and knowledge, and how does he contrast these with love?

2. According to 1 Corinthians 13:12, how does Paul describe our current way of seeing and knowing, and what does he say will replace it?

3. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, which three things does Paul say "abide," and which does he identify as the greatest?

4. In Song of Songs 8:5, how is the bride described as she comes up from the wilderness, and what is the setting she references?

5. What two images does the bride use in Song of Songs 8:6 when she says, "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm," and how does the verse describe the strength of love and jealousy?

6. In Song of Songs 8:7, what two forces does the poet say cannot quench love, and what happens to a man who tries to offer all his wealth in exchange for love?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon argues that "the key to making beauty in marriage last is to remember that marriage doesn't last." How does Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 13:8–12 about the temporary nature of spiritual gifts and the permanence of love support this seemingly paradoxical claim?

2. In Song of Songs 8:6, love's flashes are called "the very flame of the Lord"—the only explicit naming of God in the entire book. Why is it significant that divine love is introduced precisely in the context of marital jealousy and exclusivity, and how does this reshape our understanding of jealousy?

3. How does the image of the bride "leaning on her beloved" in Song of Songs 8:5 connect to the broader biblical theme of the journey from wilderness to paradise (Eden), and what does this suggest about the purpose of weakness and vulnerability in marriage?

4. Song of Songs 8:7 declares that love cannot be purchased at any price. How does this truth relate to Paul's teaching in Romans 3:24 about justification as a free gift, and why does the sermon insist that even partly transactional love feels wholly transactional?

5. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul says faith, hope, and love all "abide," yet love is the greatest. How does the sermon explain the distinction—that faith becomes sight and hope becomes possession while love deepens—and why does this make love uniquely suited to prepare us for eternity?

Application Questions

1. The sermon describes how we often respond to a spouse's (or close friend's) weaknesses with frustration rather than tenderness. Identify one specific weakness or difference in someone close to you that tends to frustrate you. How might believing that God has designed even this for your good (Romans 8:28) change the way you respond this week?

2. Think about the question "What's in this for me?" as it surfaces in your closest relationships—marriage, family, or deep friendships. Can you identify a recent moment when that question shaped your attitude or behavior? What would it look like to replace that question with "What's good for us?" in a concrete, practical way?

3. The sermon warns against "marketplace language" in relationships—settling, trading up, keeping score. In what ways have you noticed transactional thinking creeping into how you give or withhold affection, forgiveness, or encouragement? What is one step you can take to move from transaction toward grace this week?

4. The sermon lists several ways grace can build trust beyond merely earning it—lending trust, restoring trust, assuming trust charitably, protecting trust, and communicating trust. Which of these do you most need to practice in a current relationship, and what would one specific action look like?

5. Whether you are married, single, widowed, or divorced, the sermon says love shown faithfully is never wasted because "love never ends." Is there an area of your life where loving feels unrewarded or unnoticed? How does the truth that God sees and that love's effect endures into eternity encourage you to persevere in that love?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 2:18–25 — This foundational passage establishes the "one flesh" union of marriage that the sermon builds upon, showing God's original design for vulnerability and companionship in Eden.

2. Hosea 11:1–11 — This passage illustrates God's jealous, compassionate love for His unfaithful people, directly referenced in the sermon as an example of divine jealousy that arouses mercy rather than destruction.

3. Romans 8:28–39 — Paul's declaration that all things work together for good and that nothing can separate us from God's love undergirds the sermon's teaching on tenderness toward weakness and love that is stronger than death.

4. Ephesians 5:22–33 — Paul explicitly connects the one-flesh union of marriage to Christ's sacrificial love for the church, providing the theological framework for seeing marriage as a telescope pointed toward divine love.

5. Revelation 19:6–9 — The marriage supper of the Lamb, referenced at the sermon's conclusion, reveals the eternal reality to which every earthly marriage points, showing why the beauty of marriage must borrow from what lies beyond it.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Disappearance of Marriage and the Question of How Its Beauty Can Last

II. The Principle of Faithful Love: Love Never Ends (1 Corinthians 13)

III. Triumph One: Tenderness in Response to Weakness (Song of Songs 8:5)

IV. Triumph Two: Union Instead of Selfishness (Song of Songs 8:6)

V. Triumph Three: Grace Rather Than Worthiness (Song of Songs 8:7)

VI. Marriage Ends, but Love Never Ends: Living with Eternity in View

Detailed Sermon Outline

The vital benefits of marriage for society are well studied and well documented. Behavioral outcomes for kids, emotional well-being, economic stability. Yet it's not infrequent to find someone writing about the disappearance of marriage, like an article that made waves a few weeks ago in the New York Times. Like the written copies of our Constitution, where once clear ink is slowly fading into invisibility, Marriage seems to be disappearing. And yet the National Archives seem far more motivated to protect our Constitution's copies than we are for this more fundamental structuring of society.

Maybe that's because to many marriage seems boring, as the title of this sermon suggests. I hope the next few minutes disabuse you of that notion, as W.H. Auden said, like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion, but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate. No matter its faults, marriage is never boring.

Or perhaps though we dismiss marriage as boring, the real factor here is more intimidation. It's intimidating to bind yourself to one person for life, intimidating to promise anything until death do us part, let alone something so personal, which leads to an important question I want us to address this morning. How can the beauty of marriage last.

We all have an innate appreciation for the beauty of decades of faithful love. Just picture the wedding guests melting off the dance floor, transfixed by the grandparents of the bride as they sweetly dance the triumph of a half century of faithful love.

And yet we probably also know marriages that seem to have outlived beauty, and of course, marriages that didn't last.

Robertson McQuilkin was president of a South Carolina seminary, and 10 years into his tenure, his wife, Muriel, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. For years, he managed both care of her and of the school, but as she declined, he realized he would eventually need to choose between them. As a Christian, his choice was obvious, but it was hard to imagine how he could be content as a full-time caregiver sitting on the bench, as he put it, away from his life's work. So, he prayed for a miracle, one way or the other, for the Lord to work a miracle in Muriel if he so desired, or to work a miracle in Robertson if he didn't. Well, eventually, a miracle reached the point where Robertson felt he could not leave her.

She was happy when he was with her, never happy, often fearful when he wasn't. And so, he said in his resignation speech, I must be with her at all times. It's not only that I promised in sickness and in health till death do us part, and I'm a man of my word, but as I have said, it's the only fair thing. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years. If I cared for her for the next 40 years, I would not be out of her debt.

And even in that resignation speech, you can feel his trepidation. Would this now be a life of mere duty? Because, as he said, it's the only fair thing. Or would marriage continue to be a thing of beauty?

When a couple gets married, they vow for sickness and health until death do us part.

But how can that be a promise that secures not just duty, But beauty. I'd like us to consider this morning that the key to making beauty and marriage last is to remember that marriage doesn't last. Jesus was clear about that in Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 20, There is no marriage in heaven. Yet the key to making beauty and marriage last is to understand that marriage doesn't last. You could take that in a very sentimental direction, like enjoying the last warm day of autumn because you know winter's coming.

That may be true, but I'm thinking of something much more theological. For the beauty of a marriage to last, it must reach into what comes after it. It must borrow something from eternity. This morning we're going to consider what that is and why.

Because when we consider the idea of marriage as one flesh, we so often focus on the adjective one, but that noun flesh is equally important. After all, marriage outlasts death no more frequently than anything else made of flesh. This is the last of a series of topical sermons on marriage, and this morning we're going to be looking at Two passages together, Song of Songs chapter 8 and Paul's famous chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13. Our verses in the Song of Songs describe more than anywhere else in this famous book on love what is the perfect marriage. You might call it the triumph of faithful love.

And yet they reveal only half the story, like seeing the tree above but not the roots below. So before we get into the Song of Songs, which describes what faithful love looks like, we're going to start with 1 Corinthians 13, which explains how. First, the principle of faithful love from 1 Corinthians 13, and then three triumphs of faithful love from the Song of Songs. As we go, I think you'll be able to see the many different ways in which these two passages connect. So we'll start with the principle of faithful love, 1 Corinthians 13.

Which that love never ends.

This isn't specifically a passage about marriage, but it is a cherished chapter about love. Though if you read 1 Corinthians 13 in context, you realize it's somewhat of a rebuke, a rebuke of the Corinthians' lack of love. In verse 8, we see what the Corinthians seemed to have prized most: prophecy, tongues, special knowledge.

Paul's not against these things. He just says they're not ultimate.

And so, he describes the priority of love in verses 1 to 3, and he describes love itself in those famous words of verses 4 to 6, which offers a good definition of love. Love isn't merely words, it's action, acting out a commitment to finding joy in the good of another without expectation of return. Paul summarizes everything he said in verse 7, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That is, it covers sin and weakness, it trusts, it hopes, it's steadfast and faithful. And then there's that striking phrase which is on the COVID of today's service guide where we see why love is preeminent above all else, verse 8.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then Face to face, now I know in part, then I shall fully know, even as I have been fully known. So now, faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.

In verse 13, that word abide, as in faith, hope, and love abide, is in the singular. So these three seem to form a unity, yet love is the greatest because while faith and hope look toward heaven, neither will be needed there. Faith will become sight, hope our possession, but love simply deepens. So what endures, what abides, is the love generated by faith and hope. Thus, verse 8 again, love.

Never ends.

What does it mean that love never ends? He explains in verses 9 to 12. It means that love will never become obsolete. Paul says, When the perfect comes, there will be no need for prophecy, but love never ends. Prophecy and faith are like a scaffold that comes down when the building is complete.

They may be instrumental to our relationship with God, but love is the relationship, which means that love, powered by faith, motivated by hope, is of everlasting value. Its circumstances will one day pass away, even the one you love will pass away, but its effect will endure. If you want to make an eternal dent in the universe to echo Steve Jobs, you don't invent an iPhone. You love, because love never ends. And that is so critical to remember when love appears unrewarded or even unnoticed within marriage or elsewhere.

Right? If you love on your neighbor praying that she'll come to faith in Christ and she never does, was that a waste of effort? Goodness no. Because the effect of love endures. Love speaks truth about God, and that statement remains forever, right?

That's how your neighbor coming to Christ can be an ultimate motive, but not an ulterior motive. Are you widowed? That the love you showed your husband or wife is part of the praise of heaven. Are you divorced? The love you showed will last even if your marriage didn't.

When marriage is a struggle and you feel like the love you show is just pouring down a black hole, remember that God sees and that love's effect endures.

Marriage is love's proving ground and the love it proves will last Forever, even when that marriage is a distant memory. But the fact that love never ends also means verse 11, it will never be replaced with something better. But the knowledge one has as a child or the other image he uses, the image of someone in a mirror, is true but incomplete, and so it's eventually replaced with something better.

So with everything we know, All knowledge will someday be replaced. That's something important for us to hear in a city that values knowledge and in a church that values knowledge. The heights of human knowledge pale in comparison to what we will know when we are finally with God. Knowledge will pass away, but love never ends, which means that knowledge is an earthly currency with a fast approaching expiration date that we need to exchange for currency that will last, the currency of love. How much of your knowledge is being turned into love?

Kids, in some ways, you more than anybody are focused right now almost entirely on obtaining knowledge.

How can you use your knowledge to love?

And you know the fact that love will never be replaced, I think, is one of the most surprising aspects of these verses. So much of what we see around us in this world will be replaced with something better in the new creation, but not so with love, which means that love is the line of continuity between this world and the next. Even seeing God face to face will not replace love, but bring it to its fullest, which means that love prepares us for eternity. As Jonathan Edwards said, Heaven is a world of love. So not only is marriage love's proving ground, it's love's schoolhouse.

It's preparing us for heaven. And then one final observation here. Paul doesn't tell us that love never ends merely to tell us something about heaven, but to motivate love on earth. He's telling us what love will be so we can love now.

So let's answer that question. What does it mean that love never ends? It means that love will never become obsolete. That its effect lasts for eternity. It will never be replaced with something better, which means it prepares us for eternity.

And all this empowers love today because love borrows from eternity. That's true of love for your neighbors, your kids, your friends at church. It's true in marriage. Love never ends. Marriage does.

That's not a threat to the beauty of marriage. That's the secret.

So with that in hand, let's turn back to the Song of Songs, chapter 8, which you'll find on page 572 of your pew Bibles.

And our second point, three triumphs of faithful love.

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poems. It doesn't tell one cohesive story, but it is ordered roughly in sequence from the bride's longing at the beginning to their marriage in chapter 3, their wedding night in chapter 4, and finally the picture in chapter 8 verse 5 of what was once a young woman now leaning on her husband, a picture of love that's matured. This is a book that's about marriage, but of course in the Bible marriage is never just about marriage. It's a picture of God's love for his people. And so with the Song of Songs, it describes physical love between husband and wife, but at the same time, the divine love that human love points to.

It's like an old stereoscope where you need to see both things simultaneously for the full picture to come alive. The poem we're looking at begins in verse 5. Who is that? Coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved. Under the apple tree I awakened you. There your mother was in labor with you.

There she who bore you was in labor. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death. Jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.

If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.

Who is that? Verse 5 begins, Could this really be the young girl from chapter 1 coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? These verses are a song of love's triumph over three obstacles to the enduring beauty of faithful love. One obstacle is weakness, which we see in verse five. She's leaning on her beloved, yet the picture here is one of tenderness, not frustration.

So love's first triumph is tenderness in response to weakness. Then there's selfishness. Verse six, Set me as a seal upon your heart, upon your arm. In the ancient world, your seal was your signature. So her demand is that she sign her name on his heart, the source of desire, on his arm, the agent of desire.

He is no longer to operate as an independent agent but as one with her, we, not me. So love's second triumph is union instead of selfishness. And in verse 7, a third obstacle to faithful love, a sense that I must be worthy of love or that the one I love must be worthy of me. Verse mocks any sense that love can ever be earned, bought, or sold. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.

You see, love is a gift. It can only ever be a gift. And so, a third triumph of faithful love, grace rather than worthiness. Those are the three triumphs of faithful love. Three triumphs love must achieve if its beauty is to last.

Tenderness in response to weakness, union instead of selfishness, grace rather than worthiness, three triumphs in marriage made possible as we look beyond marriage when we see that love never ends. So let's start with that first, tenderness in response to weakness. Weakness just because of the posture we see there in verse six, the bride leaning against her beloved. And the tenderness that's implicit in his response, not frustration, but affection. I'm pulling a lot from this image, I'll admit, and yet it is such a powerful image, and it's so true to life and marriage.

Early in marriage, it's tempting to see differences between you as weakness. Differences in how you approach things, differences in how you think about things, with self-righteousness painting as sin, what's honestly just difference.

A few years into marriage, as your self-righteousness becomes more in view, you're able to better tell difference from weakness. And as you do, you will discover that your spouse does in fact have areas of weakness, moral, physical, emotional. And as time plods on, that category of weakness in some dimensions grows.

What you do with weakness largely sets the trajectory for beauty in your marriage.

Will that beauty decay or will it grow? Early in marriage, you have hope that your spouse will change. Later in marriage, change is still possible, but on the whole, you're gonna have to have a different kind of hope.

When Joan and I were dating and I was close to proposing, I did what made a lot of sense to my engineering mind, entirely aware of how judgmental it was. I took a piece of paper, drew a line down the middle, put a plus in one column, a minus in the other column, and I listed out all the reasons to marry her or not. You can imagine there was a lot more on the plus side, but it troubled me. What if the balance shifted after we were married? I didn't want to be in a marriage merely because the positives had once outweighed the negatives.

So I called my dad. He gave me some very good advice. You need to understand that everything in marriage, what seems good, what seems bad, is custom made by God for your good. Once you get married, it's all in the plus category, which is simply Romans 8:28 applied to marriage. For those who love God, all things work together for good.

So where does the tender posture toward weakness come from that we see here in the beloved? It does not come from believing that the good outweighs the bad. That's gonna work for a time, but in the long run, that is the road to bitterness. Because even if it is true, it won't always seem that way. Because sometimes the goods behind you and the bad is yet to come.

Because sometimes the good doesn't outweigh the bad, at least not in this life. Instead, you must believe that weakness in your spouse is designed by God for your good, just like your own weakness. And to do that, you will sometimes need to lean heavily into 1 Corinthians 13. Because the good that God is working through weakness won't be apparent in this life. It's like the good and the bad are sitting on a teeter-totter, but that fulcrum, the pivot point, rests somewhere beyond the horizon.

That doesn't mean you don't seek to help your spouse move past weakness. It means you do so patiently and tenderly because you trust God's purposes, even if those things never change.

To do that, to meet weakness with tenderness, you must remember that love never ends. That love today has impact into eternity that it's worth is found mainly there and not here. And you must remember that in marriage you are preparing each other for heaven. Richard Baxter wrote that marriage is to prepare each other for the approach of death. And comfort each other in the hopes of life eternal.

That's a mindset that requires that we not merely look to the finish line of life, but beyond. And that's the mindset that melts frustration into tenderness. The idea that marriage is preparing us for heaven is something we see even in the imagery of verse 5, the apple tree. Don't get caught up wondering why the bride has taken her beloved back to the place of at birth, people didn't give birth under apple trees then any more than they do now. The point is that this is an image of fruitfulness, right?

The fruitfulness of the tree, the fruitfulness of the woman, as the couple emerge from the wilderness. Do you see that progression? Wilderness to fruitfulness. Right? This is the man and the woman walking together back to Eden, where the Bible begins and ends with paradise, Sin and redemption are in the middle.

And the picture of marriage in Song of Songs 8 is a picture of the two of them walking together into paradise. Every marriage in that sense is a picture of redemption aimed at paradise. Every marriage is to prepare us for heaven. We see that even in how the bride talks about her beloved. Do you remember God's curse on Eve after Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3?

Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. The sense of that word desire, as we discover in Genesis 4, is not a benevolent one. And then quite notably, as we leave Genesis 4, that word for desire never appears again until the Song of Songs. Chapter 7, verse 10, I am my beloved's and his desire is for me. In marriage, desire is to be redeemed.

And isn't this a wonderful picture of Christ who leads us from the wilderness of our sin back into the garden, but we only get there by learning to lean on Him, lean on Him by faith. You see, a marriage is to be a picture of the curse falling away, a glimpse into paradise, a depiction of redemption, which no marriage does perfectly. Yet even in that ideal, like we see here in verse five, it only does that through weakness. It only does that as we lean. It's not coincidental that it's the bride who leans on her beloved.

The picture of her as the weaker of the two that we looked at a few weeks ago in 1 Peter 3 is a much maligned picture, but it's one we must understand. As I said in that sermon, sweetness in marriage comes from vulnerability made safe, made secure. For many reasons, from physical strength to the position God's assigned him as head, to the fact that if there's children, she'll bear them, She is often in the more vulnerable place. She is going to lean more. And yet as he uses his strength for her and embraces vulnerability with love together, they make a marriage sweet.

I think this has some real relevance for those of you who are dating or looking to date. Because dating is not some relational version of a corporate merger where you size up relative strengths Now, in dating, one of the most important questions you're asking is, How well do we lean? In some relationships, leaning is an unhealthy codependence, which won't make for a good marriage. In some relationships, there's not much leaning at all, which can make for a very cold marriage. But in a relationship that should lead to marriage, you lean on each other, both, but especially her.

And discover that leaning is life-giving. There's so much in this image of verse 5, the posture of leaning, the road from wilderness to fruitfulness. It's because love never ends, because love prepares us for eternity that a couple can approach weakness with tenderness rather than frustration.

And yet as sweet as the image of verse 5 is, it's balanced in verse 6 by an image which is as strong as this one is sweet, which leads to the second triumph of faithful love, union instead of selfishness.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.

And at first blush, one might think this is a selfish demand.

Sign my name on your heart. But remember that the key biblical image for marriage is the idea of being one flesh. In marriage we leave aside our families of origin, our individualistic ambitions and concerns. We become one. So when the bride asks her beloved to abandon self, she's simply asking for the two to become one.

Why?

Because that's what love does. For love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. It clings to its beloved with a death grip. Love has a holy jealousy for its beloved because the two are now one. It is so easy in marriage to often be asking the question, what's in this for me?

And verse 6 shows us that question has no place in marriage.

That question can be particularly subtle because very often in marriage, especially when it's going well, there's actually a lot that's in it for me. You're asking, what's in this for me? Is not compatible with true love because love gives itself to the beloved. Note that it's the bride who asks to be set as a seal over her husband's heart, something that defied so much assumption in the ancient world. This verse is profoundly mutual.

We belong to each other, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. And this is something that can go wrong. Becoming not we belong to each other, but you belong to me. Jealousy in marriage should be jealousy for my spouse's good, not a jealous control that comes from selfishness, or more subtly, the jealous control that emerges when I see myself as the arbiter of what's good for her. Are there ways in which jealousy in your marriage has begun to cross the line from righteous to controlling?

Verse 6 encourages us to learn what selfless exclusivity should look like by considering the jealous love of God. Love's flashes, it says, are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. This is in fact the only time in the whole book where God is named. The sparks, the flashes of human love are in fact sightings of divine love, so with the jealousy of love.

Now, I realize that for some people the idea of God as jealous and jealousy which is good is unfamiliar, maybe even startling. We're so comfortable to only ever seeing the negative side of jealousy. But you need to understand that in the Bible, God's jealousy is a mark of his love. As the true God, he is jealous that his people not be imprisoned by false gods. So in Scripture, it is in fact God's jealousy that stands behind our salvation.

God is jealous for his people because he is jealous for his name, which is good and right. In Ezekiel 39, God says he will restore his people's fortunes because he is jealous for his holy name. Or Hosea 11, God's jealousy arouses his compassion. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?

Or in James 4, the truth that rescues us from that death spiral of spiritual adultery in the midst of conflict is this: He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.

God is jealous that we be his. God is jealous for our good. And those two are one and the same. Here in the Song of Songs, the bride demands complete repudiation of selfishness, and rightly so. No longer what's in this for me, but what's good for us.

That's a tall order. How can in marriage complete repudiation of self and selfishness take place? Only, middle of verse 6, through a love which is strong as death, which is such a curious phrase. What love is strong as death? Even our marriage vows acknowledge that marriage ends in death.

Maybe this is just poetic hyperbole. Well, with the New Testament in view, where we read of the King of Love who conquered death, In 1 Corinthians 13's pronouncement that love never ends, I don't think we can read this phrase without thinking about divine love. Love that is the next line, the very flame of the Lord. The extreme repudiation of selfishness this verse describes must grow out of divine love.

You know, one reason why selfishness is so persistent in marriage is that selfless acts of love are so often unseen and unrewarded. No one knows that frustrated comment you decided to self-censor at the last minute. No one notices that you got up with your toddler at 2:00 in the morning unless, of course, you decide to tell your spouse that, which probably undermines it as an act of love. And yet, because love never ends, our motivation to love is not limited to what we get in this life. God notices.

God will reward, as Hebrews 6 says, for God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name.

Beyond that, because love never ends, love borrows from eternity, like we saw in 1 John 4, We love because he first loved us. As Hudson Taylor noted, we don't become faithful by trying to become faithful. We become faithful by looking to the faithful one. Set me as a seal on your heart, the bride asks. And in the New Testament, we are sealed by God's Spirit, Ephesians 1.

We belong to him, 2 Timothy 2, or Romans 8. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Our world is so desperate to be loved for life. Can you imagine one upping that with a love that lasts through death? By a love as strong as death, love that conquered death? My friends, the Bible says you can be loved like this. But there's a problem.

And that's that love is holy and we are not. That love is perfect, but we aren't. Our love has been marred by selfishness, by mixed motives, by deception, not to mention the bad things we've done, all of which have defamed the love of God because we're made in His image. That's what gives us capacity to love in the first place. By loving self more than we love God, we have made true love our enemy.

We have earned death and hell. So what can reconcile us to a loving God? His love, which is strong as death. In love, God became man. Jesus lived a life of perfect love, was killed by those who hate, not because he deserved to die, he died for us.

And yet, because his love is strong as death, he didn't stay dead. He rose from the dead and offers forgiveness of sin through his death for us. All we do to borrow an image from a few minutes ago is to lean on him. That's how we can be forgiven. We receive what he has done through faith, faith that flowers into repentance.

That's how we can be united to him how we can be loved by the love which is strong as death. And that's how we ourselves can then in turn love with such a love.

You see, you can't build the strength of love described here in the Song of Songs simply by trying harder, by determining you're going to do better. You build it by knowing and experiencing the love that marriage was designed to reflect, the very flame of the Lord, the one who conquered death, which leads to a final triumph of faithful love, grace rather than worthiness. Verse 7, Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.

It's interesting in verse 6, Marital love is seen as a flash. A spark. And yet it's a spark, verse 7, that even rivers of water cannot quench. How can that be? Sparks are not difficult to quench.

Well, it's because the poet here is talking not merely about human love, but love whose root is God's love. In that image, unquenchable love connects as well to the end of verse 7, love that cannot be bought. Where true love cannot be bought or earned, it's only ever a gift. And if love really is a gift, if it's not dependent on the worthiness of the one it loves, that's what makes it unquenchable.

The challenge is how often a marriage love is not seen as a gift. So many relationships, like we talked about two weeks ago, center on merit rather than mercy. We too often treat love as transactional. We see marketplace language here in the Song of Songs. Just think about the marketplace language we use to describe dating.

Don't settle. You can do better. I've invested so much. He's quite the catch. Make sure to trade up.

Just think how often in marriage we give or withhold affection based on whether a spouse is giving us what we want. Like Paul confessed in prayer earlier, do you see how any sense of transaction in marriage makes marriage brittle and fragile compared with the unquenchable marriage of grace? Here in this passage, there's a man trying to buy love with wealth a few pages over in Proverbs 31, we see a warning against trying to buy love with looks. But love must be given. It cannot be bought.

I was reading about the bower bird recently, where the male, which let's say is not a particularly attractive creature, the male attracts a mate by creating a display area and filling it with colorful objects, with different species drawn to different colors. Males steal objects from each other. Females shop around, going to multiple displays and picking a mate largely based on design and decoration. The male is essentially saying, not look at who I am, but look at what I've gathered. So my brothers and sisters looking for a spouse, don't be a Bowerbird.

There's even a Bowerbird Christianized version we should be wary of in dating where I say, I'm a seven out of ten on a holiness scale. I'm not gonna settle for anything less than a six and a half.

That's a Christian Bowerbird. Because what is holiness for? Not to exalt you, but to enjoy and serve your Lord without holiness. No one will serve the Lord. No one will see the Lord.

Hebrews 12:14. Seeking noble character in a spouse is incredibly important, but not in a Bowerbird kind of way. Set your goal for marriage to see and show the goodness of God, and you will protect against a self-righteous transactional approach to dating. You can't buy love. That truth in verse 7 seems so self-evident, and yet it is so hard to build a marriage that's not somehow built on worthiness.

It's even easy for grace itself to become transactional. What I called the Reciprocity Trap a few weeks ago. If I don't condemn you for your faults, you're less likely to condemn me for mine. If I'm patient with you, you'll be patient with me. If I show mercy and I forgive, because of what it does for me in the long run, I'm trapped.

We don't show grace merely because that's what gives us a peaceful and sweet marriage. On the surface, that might look like a grace-filled marriage, but that is doing what verse seven says we cannot do. But the motivation to show grace cannot come from what it produces within a marriage. It must flow from beyond marriage, like we saw in 1 Corinthians 13. Love never ends.

And that empowers true grace and marriage in two different ways. First, we show grace because God showed grace to us and because He will show grace to us. Our present grace borrows from His future grace.

But second, it's because showing grace is part of how we discover God's grace. I've learned so much about the sweetness of resting in God's grace as I have learned to depend on my wife's mercy. That his grace in marriage helps us see God's grace. And I've learned about the joy that God has in showing me grace as I've seen what it's like to show her grace. That his grace in marriage shows off God's grace.

Grace in marriage is part of how we see and show, discover and demonstrate God's grace to us.

So if a marriage is to escape its gravitational pull of merit and transaction. We need to learn to look at God through marriage. Marriage in that sense isn't like a windshield that works best when it's as transparent as possible, that would make marriage to be of little or no value in and of itself. But neither is it like stained glass. What we really care about is the glass itself rather than the light behind it.

Now, marriage is like a telescope through which we see the grace of God. It brings it up close. It makes it something tangible. But the point ultimately isn't the telescope. It's the stars we want to see through it.

The resources for faithful love in marriage only come as we keep our view fixed beyond marriage on the love that marriage was designed to reveal.

Maybe you're here and you are struggling in your marriage. I certainly hope you're not struggling privately. I certainly hope that you are bringing others you trust in and being honest about that struggle. But I hope that for you this encourages you because it means that the power you have to show grace resides somewhere beyond your marriage, not within it. In fact, you are probably less likely to mistake transactional grace for real grace precisely because there's not A lot of grace bubbling up from within your marriage right now.

And I hope that this helps you understand the God-given limits to your responsibility for your marriage.

Your spouse's love must be given. You cannot take on yourself the burden of getting him or her to love. You are only responsible for the grace you can show.

And this idea that love cannot be earned is significant as well for how a marriage builds trust. Trust is what makes or breaks a marriage, and no one can simply decide they're going to trust. Trust must be earned. Yet without grace, there is only one way for trust to be built. And that's by being earned.

Not that I want to denigrate the value of earning trust in marriage or friendship more generally. Nothing I'm going to talk about can replace the earning of trust. It must be earned. And yet, grace opens up all kinds of other avenues for building trust in marriage. You can graciously lend trust, extending it before it's earned.

You can graciously Restore trust by working with your spouse to rebuild what they lost. You can graciously assume trust, interpreting motives charitably until you have reason not to. You can graciously protect trust, not exposing your marriage to challenges that your trust isn't ready for. Sometimes you realize in marriage that you shouldn't trust your spouse, and yet grace calibrates distrust, graciously placing appropriate bounds around how big a deal it really is. And you can graciously communicate trust so that your spouse isn't merely trusted, but knows that he or she is trusted.

You see, as one author has pointed out, trust can't be rushed. It's like forcing sleep. It doesn't happen. That is true. Yet while a transactional marriage only has one way to build trust, which is by earning it, a gracious marriage will not rush in trust as many.

And this aspect of marriage teaches us about God's grace, doesn't it? With the Song of Songs 8:7 in view, doesn't justification by faith alone make more sense? That is the idea that we're made right with God not by our good works, but by his grace alone, received by faith alone, love cannot be earned. That's the nature of love. So many religions have elaborate recipes for how we earn God's love, but love cannot be earned.

Though some might say, I get grace, why grace alone? Why faith alone? Because a relationship that is partly transactional feels wholly transactional. Just picture a parent whose affection is contingent on good grades. There is grace in the relationship.

A lot of it, right? Room and board aren't contingent on good grades, but because some of the relationship is transactional, the whole thing feels transactional. Same in marriage, same with God. Love cannot be earned. And so Romans 3:24 says, We are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

And I would maintain that only the Christian gospel that doesn't merely preach grace, many religions preach grace, but grace alone. Only that gospel matches what we know about love. Love cannot be earned. Only by grace alone then can we ever be truly loved. If you struggle with election, that's an important truth.

If you struggle with assurance, that's an important truth. Love cannot be earned. And with that, we should conclude.

Every marriage will one day end. It's but a temporary sign that points toward something eternal, and when the perfect comes, Paul says, the partial will pass away. But our response to that sobering truth should not be to shut our eyes and pretend marriage is forever. Instead, it's to follow to where marriage points. That is the source of lifelong, beautiful, faithful love.

Marriage ends. Love never ends. And the beauty of marriage is found in how it draws on, reflects, and builds into love that never ends.

Weakness, selfishness, Insistence on worthiness are obstacles that faithful love encounters in every marriage. And if it would overcome those obstacles, it must root love today in the love of heaven. That's how weakness is met with tenderness. Selfishness dissolves into union. Marriage rests on grace rather than worthiness.

A spark, even rivers of water. Could never quench. So it was for the McQuilkins. Robertson retired early to care for Muriel and entered his retirement determined to be driven by more than just duty. It's not that I have to, he said, it's that I get to.

I love her very dearly. She is a delight.

Yet through decades of caregiving, he and Muriel discovered more beauty in their marriage than they started out with. He'd initially seen these limitations he had taken on to care for his wife as a sort of imprisonment, one he trusted God for, one he was willing to undertake for the sake of love. But in imprisonment nonetheless, 15 years into being a full-time caregiver, he wrote about how he was seeing things differently. My imprisonment turned out to be a delightful liberation to love more fully than I had ever known. We found the chains of confining circumstance to be not instruments of torture but bonds to hold us closer.

No one ever needed me like Muriel, and no one ever responded to my efforts so totally as she. It's the nearest thing I've experienced on a human plane to being loved by God, a living picture of God's unfailing love poured out in constant care of me. And yet another paradox of God's providence, the confinement of costly love turned out to be a deeper freedom than the freedom it took away. And so the beauty of marriage grew.

My friends, whether you're married We're once married, we're never married, we're never to be married. Learn from the parable of marriage, the wonders of what marriage portrays. Because as wonderful as marriage does have the potential to be, marriage was never the ultimate point, right? It's the telescope through which we look ahead to God's forever love. And if you are in Christ, you will one day experience all that marriage points to.

No matter if you get married in life, no matter what kind of marriage you have in life, you will experience what it points to. Because the great marriage of all time is not any celebration of a human institution. It's the marriage supper of the Lamb. And what a day of joy that will be. As Charles Spurgeon pointed out, if there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, Then when all those repenting sinners are gathered into one perfected body and married to the Lamb, what infinite gladness there will be.

Even heaven has its holidays, he said. Even bliss has its overflowing. And on that day when the springtide of the infinite ocean of joy shall have come, what a measureless flood of delight shall overflow the souls of all glorified spirits as they perceive that the marriage of the Lamb is come. My friends, even the sweetest of marriages is but the touch of the spray of that infinite ocean of divine love that will surround us forever. So may we all live with that day in view.

Come, Lord Jesus. Let's pray.

Father God, our eyes and our hearts are so earthbound. Our dreams are so earthbound. We pray that through our marriages, the marriages around us, the marriages we know and respect, that you would direct our gaze above. That you would help us see that there is love waiting for us in your son that is worth our entire lives to secure, and yet is given to us as a free gift. We praise you for that love.

We pray that you would capture our hearts by that love. In Jesus' name, amen.