Transcription

 Welcome my friends to this course on Rebuilding Trust. The goal of this course is going to be to help you navigate not just sobriety, which we cover in the breaking free course, but also to help you. Rebuild trust in your marriage after betrayal. So as we lay the groundwork for what should we expect, how are we going to endure the challenge?

Because let's be real, the process of rebuilding trust can be exhausting. And if we're honest, even exacerbating at times feeling like I'm doing all the right things, why aren't you trusting me? So. I wanna start us out by showing the greatest love story ever written, and that comes from scripture. So in Ephesians, we see Paul talk about that marriage was actually designed by God to convey his heart for his people.

And so what that means is our marriage is not primarily about our pleasure. It's not primarily about feeling known per se. It's our responsibility is actually to mirror God throughout scripture. So if we look at scripture, it's actually quite fascinating. It's all one narrative arc of God pursuing his wayward bride.

Watch this. So in Genesis, we have God creating mankind in his image so that he can have intimacy with them. Then. We have the fall in Genesis three, which in effect are his people filing for divorce and therefore experiencing separation of that intimacy with God. Then from Genesis 12 through about 17, we have God making a covenant with his people.

In other words, a marriage proposal. He is saying, I know you've walked away. I know there is a tremendous amount that's separating us. But I will find a way, I will make a way for us to be in intimate relationship again. Then in Exodus, God hears his fiance, uh, as they're crying out in Egypt, and, uh, it breaks his heart for his betrothed and he finds a way to deliver them.

Then Leviticus and numbers. It's not just about rules and regulations as we oftentimes may think it is. It's actually. God showing his bride how despite the separation, they can live in close proximity with him in holiness. Then in Joshua and Judges, we have the unfaithful fiance, God's people pursuing other idols, pursuing other loves, and yet God continues to pursue them despite that.

Then in Samuel and through Chronicles, we have, uh, not only Israel, God's people rejecting God as lover, but also as king. In one Samuel eight, seven, God says to Samuel, his prophet, listen to all that the people are saying to you. It is not you. They have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.

Ezra through Esther is really Israel's unfaithfulness. In other words, God's fiance's faithfulness leading them into exile, and yet God still preserves them. The Psalms are all about the depth of intimacy even after horrible betrayal. So for example, David, who authored the majority of the Psalms, commits.

Adultery. He commits murder, he commits deception, many, many things, and yet he falls flat on his face before God repents, and God still calls him a man after God's own heart. Now, for me, that's incredibly hope filled because what that means is if I am repentant and I am willing to submit to God. There is hope, there is freedom.

God does not have favorites, but he does have intimates and if we fall in our face before him and seek to pursue him and love him and know him, we too can be an intimate relationship with him. Song of Songs is really, it's poetry, but it's conveying God's heart for his people. Uh, throughout the prophets, we have God calling his fiance back, pleading with his unfaithful fiance to return, and ultimately adding more and more clear depictions of Christ, the Messiah, to come the way for God's people to live an intimate relationship with him.

Then in Hosea, that analogy or that pointing toward the Messiah. Becomes really explicit. Hosea's marriage with what we kind of assume to be a prostitute shows God's relentless pursuit of his unfaithful people. It's actually quite fascinating. If you read through scripture, almost every scenario in which it talks about adultery, it talks about idolatry, and the reason why is if we go back to the marriage analogy, representing Christ and the church.

When we choose something before God, it's idolatry. When we choose something before our spouse, it's adultery. So in effect, it's the same kind of sin, just one is directed toward our primary relationship with God, and one is more so not exclusively, but more so directed toward our spouse in a relationship that is meant to mirror our relationship with the Lord.

So then we get into the gospels where the bridegroom arrives, not the bridegroom, but our bridegroom as followers of Jesus. Jesus comes as the bridegroom, pre paying the bride price with his own life. So what that means is, in Old Testament times there when a man wanted to marry a woman, he would pay a price to the parents, and the two would be able to be, wed.

By the same token, Jesus dying on the cross for us was the payment that was required to redeem that relationship so that we could be saved and therefore reenter intimate relationship with God. Acts is where we see God's spirit now living within his people, empowering deeper intimacy and holiness. Then Revel or Romans through Revelation 18 is all about preparing the bride.

In other words, God's people to ultimately be married. So then in Revelation 19, we have the marriage supper of the lamb, which is where the marriage actually happens. That's the climax of all of scripture. With the marriage supper of the lamb where Christ and his bride, us, his people will enjoy perfect intimacy.

So why did I share all of this with you? It's not just 'cause it's deeply fascinating and I hope it provides maybe a fresh new perspective on the power of the gospel, but also because as we seek to pursue building trust with our wives, I want you to know like. We as husbands are called to mirror God in his pursuit of his bride.

Now, what I just laid out spans many thousands of years of God pursuing his bride, even though they constantly and perpetually rejected him, chose other lovers, et cetera. And so as you endure the difficulty of rebuilding trust while growing in so variety, I want to encourage you, you're not alone. God is the one who set an example for us.

And so when it gets hard, we have that encouragement as well as I encourage you to plug in to other brothers around you. So with that, we're gonna jump into, if we're gonna rebuild trust, what actually is trust?