The Most Avoided Biblical Text Good for Weddings Part 1
I enjoy weddings! Weddings are beautiful and lovely. Weddings remind me of the sweet, the good and the great. With the right attitude, everything about a wedding is fun. Whether it rains in the middle of the outdoor wedding service or the bride shows up late, it is all good so long as the groom walks home with his bride on that day. The colorful reception rooms, beautiful wedding dresses, the maids looking their best and hoping to catch the bouquet, the grooms men, mostly unmarried with their eyes set on their future marriage plans and then the angelic music that ushers in the bride, and the bride walking majestically with the aura of the pure and holy; all these make a wedding event glorious.
But what about the pastor’s preaching? Often sweet and humorous; much talk about love and more love and sometimes, a little talk about patience. We tell that ‘If you love each other, you will have a great marriage’ and this is true. The most popular text used in these sermons is 1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 7
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
But what we do not often tell the bride and his groom is that marriage will be tough and challenging because no one is really good all the time but God. That is the point of Ecclesiastes 7: 27 – 29, the most ignored text which I think will be good to be used in every wedding.
“Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered:
“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things— while I was still searching but not finding— I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.”
The reason why the teacher found “one upright man among a thousand” is only because in time to come, the Messiah – the man Jesus will be born good otherwise, all mankind- male, female have “gone in search of many schemes” outside God’s uprightness. This inclination for selfish schemes is the primary challenge of all marriages. Following the sacrificial examples of Jesus is the solution. What will this look like in our day to day lives?
To be continued…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rev Joshua Amaezechi, an ordained Minister in the Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRCNA), is the President of the LEMA Institute. He works as the Lead Chaplain at the Kalamazoo County Jail, Michigan through the Forgotten Man Ministries.
The opinions and comments expressed in this blog are exclusively that of the author.The LEMA Institute or its Board and faculty is not responsible for any aspects of the information supplied by the blogger.
