A Solemn Promise from God and before God: A Sermon for the Wedding of Greg & Jessi McCormick
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Greg and
Jessi,
In a few
moments, you’ll promise yourselves to one another, according to God's holy will,
“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to
love and to cherish” until death should part you. It’s a heavy, solemn promise—I
would say it’s the most serious promise that you will make in your life. That
is why, as we just heard a few minutes ago, “marriage is not to be entered into
inadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with
the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”
It’s a
difficult promise to keep, an impossible promise for you to keep perfectly on
your own. For your marriage is, as is the whole institution of marriage, under
fire from many directions. Satan seeks to undermine your marriage and marriage
in general, because He knows God’s Word describes a good marriage as the
closest picture of Christ’s relationship, to His own bride, the Church and if
he can mess up marriage and marriages, he will distort people’s understanding
of the love of Christ. You’re swimming against a culture that not only puts
down marriage, but seeks to redefine it, to make it ultimately meaningless. And
even more dangerous to your marriage, is an enemy closer to home—your own sinful
nature that is not above breaking a promise if it seems to suit its own
purposes and self-interests.
But I
have good news for you! As you make this solemn promise, you can do so knowing
that the Lord is making His own promise to you. In Christ Jesus, He promises to
give you all you need to succeed in your marriage and in your love for each
other. In fact, if you take the Lord at His Word, in years to come, you will
look back on this afternoon with joy and thankfulness and love.
St. Paul
describes God’s promise this way:
What then
shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who
did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with
Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s
elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who
died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed
is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger,
or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day
long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we
are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither
death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:31–39).
“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him
up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” What
an astounding promise! God gives His Son into death for you that you might have
forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.
But it doesn’t end there! This one gift multiplies
into an abundance of gifts. If God was willing to gives us His own dear Son,
surely He will “graciously give us all things.” Think about all the wonderful things
God has given you: the love of parents and grandparents; meaningful work,
material blessings too many to count—food, home, and clothes, just to
name a few.
This afternoon, He is giving you to each other “to
have and to hold from this day forward.” What a blessing that can be! What a
blessing you can be to each other! What a blessing the two of you together can
be to the people God puts into your lives—your neighbors, your family, your
employers, your children, your church.
These are all gifts from God. But—remember!—they
are a pittance compared to the real gift, the gift that makes all these others
gifts possible and meaningful: “He…did not spare His own Son but gave Him up
for us all” (Romans 8:32).
Greg and Jessi, today, in God’s presence, you will
promise your enduring faithfulness to one another. This is it, “for better, for
worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” Again, I say, it’s a
solemn promise. Will you have all that it takes to keep it?
In God’s promise of Christ, you already do. St.
Paul writes:
Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep
to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35–39).
All you
need to keep your solemn promise, God has given you, wrapped up in Christ
Jesus. He died for your sin; He rose again for your justification; He lives to
intercede for you, to strengthen you, to supply you, as God’s man, as God’s
woman, as husband and wife, as parents, as workers, as children in the family
of our Father. Live in God’s love and forgiveness and grace in Christ Jesus.
Fill yourself and build up one another with God’s love in His Word and
Sacraments. With this as the foundation of your life together, I am confident
that when you leave this place today as husband and wife, you leave with all
you need to keep your solemn promise to one another for a lifetime.
May Christ’s love so fill you that your
love for one another would never weary, but grow and deepen through every joy
and sorrow shared. Amen
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