Longing For The Groom
Ezekiel 16: 4-7
One of my favorite parts of being a minister is the ability to participate in weddings. I have participated in weddings in churches, chapels, beaches, backyards, and living rooms, weddings that cost thousand’s of dollars and weddings that cost $100.00. And every wedding has the same thing going for it. No matter how much planning you go through, no matter how long you have dreamed of the day there is going to be disaster.
The unity candle won’t light; the singer goes flat; CD skips; an usher forgets one of the grandmothers; ring barer leaves because he decided he would rather be playing in the nursery; someone’s hair gets to close to a candle; someone trips going up or down the stairs; some one faints; brides can’t talk because if the tears; the groom can’t remember what you just asked him to repeat.
And then there is the bride’s mother is sniffing or crying out on the front row. I was told that girls tend to marry men like their fathers, and that’s why their mothers cry at the wedding. Don’t know how true that is.
Even my wedding was marred by some unfortunate events.
Trista showed up late, not to the wedding but 2 hours past the time she was supposed to be getting ready.
Our dripless candles wouldn’t light then they dripped all over the carpet.
The bride’s cake was yellow. Just to name a few.
But that day we learned that no matter how many things go wrong at the wedding, to those who attend it is still an unforgettable moment. At the moment that the wedding march begins and everyone rises and turns their head to see the Bride, and she appears from the back beautiful and beaming. She walks down on the arm of her father and the entire gathering turns slowly with her passing.
I believe as that music swells and we enter that moment some of the most powerful emotions that can be stirred in the human mind are evoked. It marks the uniting of two lovers-eagerly pledging their lives for love and their love for life.
You often hear the young couple say to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.
I believe the reason that this one event invokes such deep feelings is because we know, whether we realize it or not that a wedding ceremony is such a compelling picture of God’s love for us. We who have a relationship with God, know that scripture describes Him as our spouse.
There is a sense in which a “single” Christian is a contradiction in terms, for all Christians are married to God. We have offered him the ultimate allegiance of our lives in response to his unremitting love.
This wonderful portrait of God focuses us towards our three points tonight: His unrestrained love, His jealousy, and His incredible grace.
First we look at His Unrestrained love
When we think of a bride, we usually picture the society page look: exquisite white dress, jewelry, flowers, and innocent smile. "There’s no such thing as an ugly bride," an old saying claims.
But that’s where our experience here on earth is quite different from God’s experience. We are told in the Old Testament that God found His bride-abandoned in an open field. What a place to find a wife! And what a condition to find her in!
To emphasize the unconditional nature of God’s love, he reminds us of this in Ezekiel 16:4-5:
And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
Then and now God gives His love to us because He graciously chooses us. We are attractive to God because of His loving nature and desire to pour out grace, not because there is any loveliness in us. We did not catch his eye because of our appearance. As we read on we will discover that we only become beautiful after God has accepted us. Verse 6-7
And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.
I don’t believe that we will ever really begin to have a true relationship with Jehovah until we recognize how truly amazing His grace still is. Unfortunately in the Church we don’t spend enough time looking at His staggering grace. We feel like we have worked hard enough and kept the law good enough for God to accept us as His bride but that goes against what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:8 "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us".
While we were wallowing in our own blood, God makes us flourish. That’s how we came into this relationship. As we are united with God through our Baptisms the wedding song was not "Faithful and True."
Not according to the picture we see in Ezekiel 16. If the Biblical picture of our fallenness is true then our wedding march would have been more like this:
Just as I am, without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me And that thou bidd’st me come to thee O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am! poor, wretched, blind Sight, riches, healing of the mind, Yea, all I need, in Thee to find ....
Nothing in my hand I bring: Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace.
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound! That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.
I hope that God grace is still amazing to you. God pursues the poor, wretched, and blind like a young man pursuing the love of his life-wearing his best kakis, shaving every week whether he needs to or not, and calling just to hear her voice on the phone. This is the picture of His wild extravagant grace we see next in our passage (9-14):
I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord GOD.
Once again Ezekiel reminds us how much God has done to show His love for us. He is the Eternal Lover whose relentless courtship culminated in the incarnation of Jesus. The Lover finally came for his bride.
God is our perfect, caring spouse. He is the One, the only One, who can fill our deepest needs.
And it is that Unrestrained love that turns into Jealous love.
We’ve all been warned about the danger of jealousy. About how it can destroy a family, a marriage, and a soul. So perhaps we’re surprised to hear Scripture say that our God is a jealous God. How can that be?
Our passage tonight may have the answer. I was having a conversation with someone this week and they were complaining that their wife was just too jealous. He couldn’t even have a conversation with a female at work without his wife jumping all over him.
I explained that there is trust and jealously in a healthy mature marriage. In a monogamous relationship like marriage, complete with its covenant and vow, jealousy is entirely appropriate. In fact, without it there’s no true love. We promise to be exclusively faithful to each other until death, and any breach of that promise would appropriately, summon righteous jealousy.
Some of you might remember Mary MacGregor’s 1976 song "Torn Between Two Lovers" in which a woman tries to comfort her husband and justify to him her reasons for having an extra-marital affair:
There’s been another man that I’ve needed and I’ve loved. But that doesn’t mean I love you less. And he knows he can’t possess me and he knows he never will. There’s just this empty place inside of me that only he can fill.
Torn between two lovers, feelin’ like a fool. Lovin’ both of you is breaking all the rules. You mustn’t think you failed me just because there’s someone else; You were the first real love I ever had and all the things I ever said, I swear they still are true.
For no one else can have the part of me I gave to you. Torn between two lovers, feelin’ like a fool Lovin’ both of you is breaking all the rules.
The thought behind that billboard #1 song is absurd. Asking someone not to be hurt or upset about broken promises and vows is crazy. Adultery always, always brings deep pain because it is never alone. It is accompanied by deceit, betrayal, and loss of self-respect. It ruins relationships that are built on trust and founded on commitment.
This is the gut-wrenching jealousy that God experiences when His bride breaks their covenant. In the next part of our passage tonight listen to the explicit words of our God as He painfully tells of His grief over His people’s spiritual adultery in verse 15, and then 32-34.
But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his
Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.
Ezekiel is discussing how God’s people of Judah failed to give all their love to their Lord. Rather, they shared their love with the other gods of the land. They eagerly participated in the idolatry of the people around them. And in that participation they broke their marriage vows with God. They neglected the very first commandment: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2, 3).
This passage has meaning for us today as well. All to often we claim allegiances to God, the same God that saved us while we were in our sin, but we live no different from the world around us. We long for and love the things and the pleasures of this world. We give our time, talents, and affection to things that were made by the creator instead of the creator Himself. In so doing we have also broken our marriage vows
God’s love is an exclusive love. It does not allow rivals. God refuses to be replaced in our hearts by someone or something that catches our attention. He will not share the throne of our hearts. Only God can receive our ultimate devotion, energy, and trust.
We have no choice but to turn our eyes from the dying world around us. Some are drawn by a quest for knowledge, others by wealth, some by sex, others by "good causes," some by allegiance to country, and others by a career.
God will not permit us to keep a lover on the side, instead He regretfully allows us to leave Him for our lover. We see this in Luke 18 when Jesus sorrowfully watched a rich young ruler walk away because he wouldn’t give up his pursuit of wealth.
James picks up this theme of God’s jealousy when he reprimands Christians for their unhealthy love for the things of this world: In James 4:4 he writes:
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
In the very next verse he explains why this is true: "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?
Incredible Grace
In our human nature we would think that because the people of Judah, and us as well, violated their agreement with the Lord, they should be forever banished from His house, and eternity with Him. And at first it seems that is going to be their lot. Pick back up in verse 38-42:
And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. And I will give you into their hands, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places. They shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful jewels and leave you naked and bare. They shall bring up a crowd against you, and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. And they shall burn your houses and execute judgments upon you in the sight of many women. I will make you stop playing the whore, and you shall also give payment no more. So will I satisfy my wrath on you,
Not exactly the words of hope that we would expect from a loving God! Could it be that people of God who are caught in the very act of adultery will be stoned to death? Is there no second chance? Well we said that tonight we would end with His Incredible Grace. So lets go to verse 59:
For thus says the Lord GOD: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord GOD.”
Judah had been unwilling to keep the covenant, so out of His own deep reservoir of love God offers renewal. But how is that possible? How could we ever deserve that?
The truth is we can’t. The same grace that God used when He made His first covenant with us, when he found us abandoned, is the same grace He now used to "make atonement for you for all you have done."
God makes it possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, on the cross. God, the Divine Lover, reconciles us to Himself through this extravagant gift. He offers His Son as our substitute, allowing Jesus to bear the consequences for our sins.
This helps us understand Paul’s never-ending gratitude for being "in Christ." For "in [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding" (Ephesians 1:7,8).
Paul never forgot the Lord he’d met on the road to Damascus. And he never quit reflecting on his baptism into Jesus Christ. Maybe we need to remember our first love as well.
Offer invitation.
