Sabbath: Images From Marriage
Daily Lesson for Sabbath 12th of April 2025
Image © Pacific Press
Read for This Week’s Study: Genesis 2:23-25, Ephesians 5:29-32, Ezekiel 16:4-14, Revelation 18:1-4, Genesis 24:1-4, Revelation 19:1-9.
Memory Text:
“Then he said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” ’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true sayings of God’ ” (Revelation 19:9, NKJV).
The Bible is replete with love stories that powerfully reveal aspects of salvation and of God’s love for His people. The most intimate of relationships, marriage, proves to be a school in which, if we allow ourselves to experience it the way that God had intended, we can discover deep lessons about His love for us, about our relationship to Him, and about the lengths to which He has gone to redeem us.
Modern conceptions of love and marriage have skewed our ability to appreciate what God is trying to teach us through the marital covenant. Though human sinfulness has greatly perverted marriage (and just about everything else), marriage can still be a powerful way of revealing truth, even prophetic truth. More than just to make us happy, marriage should be a school in which we learn deep lessons about ourselves and our relationship to God.
This week we will explore different ways the Word of God talks about marriages, good and bad. We can then draw lessons from these examples to understand better how God relates to His people, even when they fall short, and we can learn some truths about His love that can help us better grasp last-day events.
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 19.
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What does marriage have to do with prophecy? Marriage is used as an imagery to show God’s desire to have the most intimate, pure, faithful, loving, and joyous relationship with those waiting for Jesus’s return. Marriage is not simply a celebration but a consummation of a relationship which is meant to be permanent. As marriage requires preparation, we need to stay faithful and wear the wedding garment. As love is the heartbeat for marriage, so is love for God and our fellow beings the defining attribute for God’s children.
“For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself” (Ephesian 5:25-28, NLT)
Thank you, Omwenga, for drawing our attention to how the study of the day relates to the subject of the quarter.
Indeed, God uses the symbol of marriage to describe the relationship He desires with His people. This symbol and motif are repeated many times and in many ways in prophecy. The prophet Hosea was commissioned to live out a prophecy about God and His people by marrying a prostitute. God demonstrated through Hosea and his unfaithful wife how Israel treated God, their husband.
Jesus told the parable of a wedding to teach about the garment of righteousness all must wear to enter the wedding feast of the King of kings. It cannot be bought, but it is offered freely.
In Revelation, Jesus shows John visions of a pure woman, the bride of Christ, and the prostitute who pretends to be His wife.
Can you think of more wedding imagery in prophecy? (I just now thought of some more, but I wonder what you will come up with. 😉)
A few years ago, at a camp meeting, I visited with a couple who had been married for several years. They openly told me that after they got married, they both realized they had made a mistake and married the "wrong" person. However, realizing they had made a vow, they both died to self and decided to give it all they had to make it work for the other person. In so doing, they have turned a mistake into a beautiful marriage. They told me even if you marry the wrong person, if both spouses die to self and live to make the other one happy, you can make it work out beautifully. To me, that is one of the most romantic and beautiful love stories I have ever seen.
Can you share how your spouse has shown you God's self-sacrificing and unconditional love? Can you share ways other families have helped you see the love of God more clearly?
Dear William,
Thanks indeed for your contribution. This is a great sermon. This is the true secret for successful marriages in the 21 century. Marriages needs sacrifices as we need oxygen to live. Jesus sacrificed Himself to be a husband to the church. I can also say, marriage works beautifully in Jesus's name. Marriage is alive and beautiful by God's mercies. God did not initiate this institution to fail. Even though sin has corrupted many marriages, God still cares about this union between a man and a woman.
True biblical marriage is designed to be an object lesson of God’s love for us. I heard a preacher say that God's goal in marriage is our holiness, not necessarily our happiness. Happiness will come with holiness, and that only comes with total submission to Jesus Christ. Marriage reveals the character flaws in a person but is intended by God to work out those flaws through the power of the Holy Spirit. Self is the biggest obstacle. Self must die so that Christ can live in and through the individuals. A Christ centered marriage is a blessing and a testimony to the power of God to bring two flawed individuals together, and make them one flesh in every aspect of the relationship. Men, if you aren't modeling Christ to your wife don't you be expecting submission. A woman will willingly submit to a husband that loves her like Christ loves the church. There are times when indeed marriage requires a lot of grace. It's not easy forging two lives into one. However, with God all things are possible. Christ must be the glue that holds you together. Love is not a feeling, sometimes it's an act of the will.
After reading the story of the couple,it is a wonderful time to reflect and apply God's principle of love even in the bond of marriage,to a friend/s who wronged you and an enemy, love even the unlovable .