(upbeat music) - Yesterday we talked about gifting a body to science, a natural question from your cremation article. The most unexpected follow-up question from your cremation article is on wedding summer from here in Minnesota. Writes on to ask this, "Dear Pastor John, "in your recent article on cremation, you wrote, "'Pastors should lead the way in cultivating a church ethos "'where expensive funerals and weddings are not the norm.'" End quote.

This is something I hadn't given much thought to before and really appreciated, thank you. I was hoping you could speak more directly on the topic of expensive weddings. How can we design a Christ-exalting, simple wedding? - I will have a plea to couples in a minute for courage to be counter-cultural in this regard 'cause that's what it's gonna take.

But I'm mainly pleading with pastors in that article to take the initiative to teach and preach and help in the church to build a culture of simplicity in the church that makes the focus of marriage celebrations the Lord Jesus, the Christ-exalting meaning of marriage, the awesome importance of the vows, the preciousness of the people, the lovers, and not the clothing, the flowers, the location, the music, the whole production that can make the actual act of God in marriage seem like an incidental prelude to the big fancy party afterwards.

It's sad, I think. But of course, this is not an attack on joy. Just the opposite. It's a plea for drinking from the deepest pools of joy, not the peripheral puddles of happiness. I mean, besides, godly poor people, godly poor people regularly have more joy than rich people. There's no correlation between expensive and joyful, none, unless it's this, more expensive means more hassle, more stress, more distraction, less joyful.

So this is a plea to leaders to cultivate an expectation of simplicity so no one with modest means, and that's a lot of people, feel like a simple wedding with a mince and nuts reception, no meal, no dance, just joy, is somehow less honoring to the Lord than the couple, that's tragic if we've cultivated a situation like that.

Now here's the underlying worldview. She was asking why. A decisive turn happened in redemptive history when Jesus came into the world. The Old Testament was by and large a come and see religion, while the New Testament is largely a go tell religion. That's why there is a lavish expenditure in the Old Testament on the temple.

Come see from Egypt and from Ethiopia and from the ends of the earth, come see this expensive temple that we've built and why wealth was seen so regularly as a sign of God's blessing. Now that has radically changed with the coming of the son of man who had no place to lay his head and told us to go risk our lives to disciple the nations.

We're not living in the Old Testament times. This is not a come see religion. Christianity doesn't even have a center geographically. This is a go tell religion. So the revolution is in the use of our resources. What governs our lifestyle now is the effort to show that our treasure is in heaven and not on the earth.

What governs us is the effort to maximize our giving, to finish the great commission and love the hurting of the world. The New Testament is relentless in pushing us towards simplicity and economy for the kingdom and away from luxury and away from affluence and away from finery, including luxurious weddings.

So just to give you a taste of what I mean when I say it's relentless, Luke 6:20, "Blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Woe to you rich for you have received your consolation." Luke 8, 14, "The word is choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life." Luke 9, 58, "The son of man has no place to lay his head." Matthew 6, 19, "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy." Luke 6, 25, "I tell you, don't be anxious about your life.

Life is more than food and clothing." Luke 12, 33, "Sell your possessions, give alms, provide yourselves with purses in heaven." Luke 14, 33, "Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." Luke 18, 24, "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of heaven." 2 Corinthians 6, 9, "Paul was poor yet making many rich.

He had nothing yet possessed all things." 1 Timothy 6, 7, "We brought nothing into the world. We can't take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content." Hebrews 10, 34, "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you yourselves knew you had a better possession and an abiding one." When Noel and I were married, she wore her mother's wedding dress free.

No, she had some alterations to make. Probably a few dollars. I wore my best and only Sunday suit. My best man did the same. Her matron of honor wore a nice Sunday dress. We had an open Bible and a cross on the platform just to show what our values were.

The church organ was played. My father preached. The church provided a reception, which was in the church fellowship hall. No meal, no refreshments. There was a cake. I borrowed my father's car to go on a honeymoon, seven hour drive to St. Petersburg, Florida, where we stayed in a single story motel on the beach.

It was all simple. It was all full of joy. It was explosive with happy expectation. Nobody borrowed any money. The Lord, the word, the vows, the lovers were the foreground and God was honored. And we are just as married 47 years later as anybody. I think that's a good idea.

Now, let me stress again, there is a place for special. Okay, hear me? There is a place for special, special dress, special expenditures, special beauty in the simplicity of the Christian life. There's a place for beauty. But what is happening in the evangelical church today, it seems to me, is careening out of control.

And somebody needs to put the brakes on. And I'm pleading with pastors especially, let the service and the word and the vows and the Lord and the love be the main thing. There does not have to be a meal after the wedding. Believe me, there doesn't. There doesn't have to be a dance.

It doesn't have to be an expensive hotel. There doesn't have to be a paid quintet. Really, it doesn't have to be. So besides pastors who lead on this, we need young people with backbone and radical Christian courage to stand against a culture and show what truth and beauty and joy can look like at one fourth the cost and one fourth the anxieties and one fourth the stress and double the focus on the glory of Christ and the advancement of his kingdom.

- Wow, thank you, Pastor John. That is powerful. And this episode reminds me that we have a free book on our site titled "Preparing for Marriage, "Help for Christian Couples." You can download it free of charge at desiringgod.org/books. And we will talk more about marriage in about a week on the question of should I finish school before I get married?

I know that's a question that you and Noel were faced with as well. But for now, thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with author and longtime pastor John Piper. We are nearly 900 episodes into this thing now. And of course, you can search our entire archive of episodes.

You can download our podcast app. You can subscribe to the podcast, even send us a question of your own. Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)