Marriage Supper of the Lamb
7 Blessings of Revelation Series
CCCAG 06-23-24
-Scripture- Rev 19:6-10
We are over halfway done with June already!
Isn’t that amazing? Friday, we had the summer solstice, which is the day of the year where we have the most sunlight. It’s all downhill from here, and the daylight will slowly grow less and less until December 21st when the days start to get longer again.
Something to look forward to.
Another thing about the month of June is graduations.
Children graduating to the next grade, teenagers graduating into high school, and of course young adults graduating from their primary education and entering their adulthood.
Some will join the workforce/college/start jobs, enter the miltary
Graduations are special. They are milestones in our lives that symbolize and reward some type of effort put forth to reach a goal.
The idea of graduation is even seen in the bible.
In the book of Revelation we see an event that is spoken of a lot when we talk about the end times.
It’s an event called “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb”.
Before we read the verse that speaks of this, let’s review where we are in the tribulation
In Revelation, John has been describing the final 3 ½ years of the Great Tribulation.
We talked about it briefly last week
Sores on those who worship the beast, also called the antichrist
All water turning to blood- every sea creature dying.
Complete darkness
Now-
The world capital from where the antichrist rules from, Babylon will be complete destroyed in an hour.
When we talk about destruction- Think fire/brimstone, wrath of God falling like it did in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now The Apostle John switches his view from what is happening on earth, to what has been going on in heaven during the time of the tribulation.
What does John see? A party! In a party that has lasted about 7 earth years.
Why do I say earth years?
Because this party is occurring in heaven. Time will be experienced very differently there.
This party is the culmination of the church age. All of the Christians who have ever lived will attend this celebration, or another way of looking at it is to say it’s a graduation ceremony for those who have been faithful to God.
Let’s read about it-
Rev 19:6-10 Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters, and like the rumbling of loud thunder, saying, Hallelujah, because our Lord God, the Almighty, reigns!
(7) Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself.
(8) She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure. For the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints.
(9) Then he said to me, “Write: Blessed are those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb!” He also said to me, “These words of God are true.”
Prayer
Although I have been talking about this event in terms of a graduation party- it’s important to see the rich symbolism being described for us in God’s word regarding this.
So from now on we will focus on this idea of this event being a wedding celebration.
During His ministry on earth, Jesus attended a few weddings, and He used the example of the Hebrew and near eastern wedding practices to highlight aspects about His coming Kingdom.
Understanding these verses in the context of the time and place they were written is key to interpreting this idea of the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.
Let’s look at the idea of Marriage from the Hebrew perspective, culture, and practice. Lets first talk about-
I. The preparation for the wedding
In bible times, a marriage had two phases.
The engagement or betrothal.
Then the celebration feast and consumption
Let’s look at the engagement/betrothal period. The difference between the bible’s definition and modern practice is that in bible times, an engagement meant you were legally married.
Remember when Jesus’ earthly father Joseph found out Mary was pregnant during their engagement? Joseph was contemplating divorce, not just breaking up.
(Strong emphasis)That’s critically important to remember as we move forward because it has everything to do with how we view ourselves today.
We are married to Jesus. But are in the betrothal period -not yet living in his home.
Yet we are still called the bride of Christ.
During the betrothal period, two things happened-
For the husband- he went and started his career.
He bought land for a farm.
Learn a trade and either work for the man who taught him the trade or open his own business.
The crux of what he was to do-
Find a job.
This is not very woke of me, but I don’t care. Men, particularly if you are young and married with a family, you are to work. I don’t believe choosing to be a stay-at-home dad unless there is a medical reason for it. I don’t care how much your wife makes, as a man your whole makeup is such that if you don’t have a job, you will not achieve your potential as a man.
Paul went so far as to say; “Men, don’t call yourself a believer if you don’t work”.
1Ti 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
I don’t think that is a problem in our men in this church- you are all hard workers, but maybe someone needed to hear that by podcast.
Quite often, this would be something that was already taken care of before the engagement but if not, the expectation was that they would immediately launch into being an adult.
That’s the big takeaway for us is two fold-
First, Jesus has done the work for us in regards to our salvation. It’s a finished work meaning there isn’t anything we can do to add or subtract from it.
Just believe in it and live accordingly by HIS word.
The second takeaway and example that we see-
It doesn’t matter what kind of work you do- within reason of course.
You can’t be a Christian assassin. Sorry, John Wick is not a Christian.
You need to remove one of those descriptors because they can’t be together.
The point is- God wants you to work, and allow your work to glorify him. It doesn’t matter if you are emptying port-a-potties, mucking stalls, bailing hay. You can be a mechanic, in healthcare, a checkout person, or a driver
Or, a homemaker- that’s a job too whether you are paid for it or not. The job title doesn’t matter- you just do it for God’s glory.
The second thing they did- prepare a home.
In bible times, the man would buy property, and often physically build a house to live in and prepare a place for his bride and future family to come and live with him in marriage.
How that applies to us is this- Jesus has had 2000 years to do this very thing for us.
He tells us that what HE is doing-
Joh 14:1-3 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. (2) In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? (3) If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.
Jesus is deliberately using the language of marriage to try and show us that we should not be focusing so much on building kingdoms here on earth, but focusing on what Jesus is building for us in heaven.
We get a glimpse of what Jesus is building for us in Revelation 21 where John is shown a cube like structure (possibly a tesseract) 1500 miles wide, long, and high. I did some math and that would be 3.375 billion cubic miles of area on the inside of that structure.
That’s a lot of space. When I thought about this, I nerded out a little and want to share it with you.
Consider this- Modern science estimates that 100 billion people have lived on the planet since it was created, however they are using faulty data of billions of years I don’t believe the number to be that high.
Creation scientists put that number at about 35-45 billion people.
For fun, let’s use 45 billion for our starting number. The majority of those most likely did not make it to heaven. But again just for fun, lets be generous and say they did.
I did the math- if this cube was just subdivided into equal parts for every person who has ever lived-
Each person would get 168 square miles or 107,520 acres taking into account the height involved to make it cubic, you’d have your own sky and atmosphere.
Pigeon, Hale, Preston, and Lincoln townships
But, remember we began this problem with a faulty premise- that everyone ever born will be there.
Let again be generous and say 20% of everyone who has ever lived will make it. Multiply that number by 5
We all get something roughly the size of this county.
All of this to show you- That is what Jesus is preparing for us.
I could get even more nerdy and talk about the superhuman strength and supernatural abilities we will also have, but you get the idea-
1Co 2:9 But as it is written, What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived?— God has prepared these things for those who love him.
That’s what Jesus is doing. He is fulfilling his role as the husband to provide for HIS bride the best eternal life HE can possibly give her.
We will talk about the bridal preparation in a moment, but let’s look at the Apparel or clothing needed.
II. The Apparel at a Hebrew wedding
In the Hebrew world, they had specific clothing people would wear to these kinds of events.
In fact, often the clothing was supplied by the family of the bridegroom to this specific event.
Jesus alluded to this in a parable. In Matthew 22, Jesus gives a parable about a king who sends out invites to his wedding feast.
The first people refuse to come.
The king sends out a second invitation, with a menu that would make their mouth water.
They still refuse to come, and even beat up and kill the messengers to told them about the invitation.
The king was understandably enraged about this. He dealt harshly with these people- burning their city to the ground.
Then he tells his servants- go to the streets, and invite everyone you come across to the banquet.
The servants did that, even hitting skid row and gathering everyone to the kings house. It was now full.
The king saw someone not dressed in the wedding apparel that he supplied, and when he asked the man about it, he was speechless.
The king ordered him to be cast out into the outer darkness.
To unpack this for us-
First- the garments supplied for the marriage supper of the Lamb are provided for us by the groom.
They are robes washed in the blood of Jesus. Only they are not crimson in color, but sparkling white.
Prior to salvation I could never understand how blood could make something white.
It wasn’t until after the Holy Spirit showed me the darkness of sin, it’s ability to rot our souls, ruin our relationships, and crush our spirits that I saw the necessity of the blood of Christ to make me clean.
Why are the garments so important?
Earlier I compared the marriage supper of the lamb to us graduating into heaven. When I graduated, I had the robe, I had the regalia, honors cords, veterans cord, leadership stole- all to point out my individual accomplishments in earning a degree.
If I attempted to enter into the marriage supper of the lamb wearing all of that stuff, I’d be bound and thrown into the utter darkness just like the man in the parable.
Why?
Because at this ceremony the robes required are supplied by the bridegroom, not from my effort.
The robes are symbols of Jesus’ sacrifice, death, and resurrection.
Jesus has earned the regalia, he earned the honors, he earned the robes. This is all about HIM, not us.
It is not called the wedding supper of the believer, but the wedding supper of the lamb- Jesus.
What that means for us today is this-
It’s all about HIM.
It’s all about what HE supplies for us
It’s all about what bring HIM honor and glory, not about us.
The apparel we wear only points to Jesus, because he alone is worthy.
We’ve spent most of our time looking at what the bridegroom did for the bride during the marriage preparation, but what is the brides job?
III. Our responsibility
The most descriptive example in the bible we see of what a bride would do is seen when a king was going to marry a queen.
The bride would have an extended time of beauty treatments. You can read a little about them in the OT book of Esther.
We know from the bible and from historical documents that this involved extensive, often painful skin treatments, permanently applied makeup which was also painful. Strict diet and exercise programs to make sure their bodies were appealing to the King.
They would also have the friends of the bride stand watch for when the king returned, they would sound the alert so the bride could be ready to meet the KING, perform the final ceremony, and consummate the marriage.
You might be thinking- this is great, but why does it matter for us?
It gives a reason to our suffering, trials, and hardships.
Just like skin peelings and tattooed makeup probably was not comfortable for a woman in the bible times to experience, they did it be beautiful for their husband, because he was worth it in their eyes.
That’s how we should look at our lives, particularly – during difficult seasons
2Co 4:16-18 Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. (17) For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. (18) So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
So I would encourage us today- instead of asking Jesus to remove the pain, the suffering, or the annoying parts of our lives, pray instead-
”Jesus, let the pain and my reaction to this situation make me more beautiful to you. Help me to yield to your will, and learn the lesson you are teaching me”
Let’s all commit to this heart attitude when it comes to the hardship in our lives, because this the will of God for us in Christ Jesus.
I want to say one more thing about this before moving toward the end of the message-
I know this is a little hard for us men to appreciate being called a bride, especially in our world that apparently can’t tell the difference between male and females.
I’m not trying to confuse gender lines when I teach this point. I am not nor will ever go woke about this.
But we need to see ourselves in the correct biblical light when it comes to our relationship with Jesus and HIS kingdom.
To close, I point out the last sentence here-
These words of God are true
I mentioned before that the period we are in now is the engagement period, but that we need to treat it like a legal marriage.
What that means is- Jesus is stuck with you.
The blessing we receive is because of who HE is, not because of WHO you are.
If you have surrendered your life to Jesus, You have a dinner reservation. The biggest, most lavish, and extravagant party the universe has ever seen. Your card is on the table at the place you will be sitting. And its not going anywhere. That table is set, and the angels are waiting to slide back your chair, and offer you a seat when you enter into HIS kingdom.
Prayer
