"The Bride of Christ"

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   Ask any pastor what they would rather do, perform a funeral or a wedding, and how do you think the vast majority of them would respond?  Without a doubt, I can guarantee you they would say they’d rather do a funeral.  On the other hand, ask the average person in the pew on Sunday morning what they would rather do, attend a funeral or a wedding, and how do you think the majority of them would respond?  Without a doubt, they’d rather attend a wedding.  Now let’s ask the obvious question.  Why is that?  Why do most pastors prefer doing a funeral over a wedding?  One word: FOCUS.  At a funeral people are typically locked in on what the pastor has to say because they’re yearning for some words of comfort and hope that can help ease the sorrow they’re going through.  At a wedding, however, they’re focused upon so many other things: the way the church is decorated, the music, the bridesmaids’ dresses, whether the ring bearer and flower girl are going to make it down the aisle, the nervous groom, and most of all, the beautiful bride.  When that bride begins her procession down the aisle holding ever so tightly to the arm of her proud father, all eyes in the sanctuary turn toward her and gaze upon her.  I’ve performed 204 weddings over the course of my ministry and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an ugly bride.  I’ve seen a few grooms who left a bit to be desired, but the brides are always striking and radiant in their beauty.

   And that’s why I find it so interesting that when God chooses to describe the church – this body of believers who will one day spend eternity with him – he employs matrimonial language and refers to this family of redeemed people as a bride.  In fact, in our text he calls us “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Now this is not unusual at all.  This is not something that is just unique to the Book of Revelation.  Rather, throughout the New Testament we find similar references.  In Matt. 22:2, for example, Jesus begins one of his parables by saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”  Elsewhere in Matt. 25:1 he says: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins (bridesmaids – NLT) who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” In Eph. 5 where the Apostle Paul describes the kind of relationship that a husband and wife are to have with one another, he tells the husbands that they are to love their wives as Christ loved his bride, the church, and gave himself up for her.  The Scriptures are replete with these types of references and pictures and with painting the first day of eternity as a wedding day.

   So as we continue our study of heaven this morning in my “Homeward Bound” sermon series, it is absolutely vital that we spend some time looking at weddings, in particular, Jewish weddings as they were performed in Jesus’ day because that would have been the frame of reference used by him and the other writers of the New Testament when they described the followers of Christ as his bride.  So what were weddings like back in the 1^st century?  Well, one thing we’ll discover is that they were far different from weddings today.  The culture of Jesus’ day knew nothing of Las Vegas wedding chapels, living together before marriage, or no-fault divorce.  Instead they saw marriage as a holy covenant preceded by an extended engagement followed by a highly symbolic wedding ceremony.  And it all started with the dedication of the groom. 

   In those days it fell to the guy to pursue the girl.  Now she might glance at him as he walked by and maybe even flash a shy smile in his direction, but she was not permitted to take the first step.  She couldn’t write him a note or leave a text message on his cell phone or post something on her Facebook page that might be deemed as a move in his direction.  So woe be to the girl who found herself attracted to a bashful man. 

   And if a man found himself attracted a woman in his village, woe be to him if he approached her first before approaching her father.  Speaking to the father was always first on the agenda of an interested male.  So it was always the man who initiated the relationship.  It was always the man who made the first move and took the first step.

   And isn’t that exactly what Jesus did with us, my friends?  Was it not he who took the first step toward us?  Now why he took that step is beyond me and I suspect will always remain one of the great mysteries of the ages because when you think about it, what did we have to offer him?  Absolutely nothing, right?  We weren’t exactly attractive from his perspective.  He was the king and we were mere paupers.  He was perfect and we were imperfect.  He was holy and we were unholy.  He was powerful and we were weak.  Yet for some reason known only to him he fell in love with us.  “You did not choose me,” Jesus says in John 15:16, “but I chose you.”  And because he chose us, he pursued us, much like I pursued my bride-to-be Marilyn when I first met her at the Campbell Hill picnic back in 1974.  I was introduced to her the Saturday night of the picnic and soon found myself vying for her attention with another guy who really irritated me because he seemed just as interested in her as I was.  So after a sleepless night of tossing and turning, I decided I needed to get serious about this girl lest I lose my chance to get to know her better.  So that next evening I asked one of my friends who sat next to her in a jazz band that was playing at the picnic to give her a message from me.  The message was simple: Meet me at the cranes when you’re done – those toy cranes that you paid 10 cents to operate as you tried to pick up some little trinket that wasn’t even worth 10 cents.  Well, she did take me up on that invitation and then accepted another invitation from me to go out on our first date the next weekend.  So it was I who pursued her.

   And in a very similar way, Jesus pursued us.  But he not only pursued us, he also purchased us.  Getting back to those 1^st century Jewish weddings, when the guy realized that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this girl, he then gave gifts both to the bride-to-be and her father.  This was called a dowry which was more than just an empty gesture or token gift.  One writer says, “It served to establish something comparable to a blood covenant between giver and recipient.”  So by the giving of this dowry, the man displayed not only his interest in the girl but his dedication to her and to the marriage he was hoping to have with her. 

   And did not our Bridegroom Jesus pay a dowry for us?  You bet he did, for the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 6:19-20: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”  Only Jesus’ dowry didn’t consist of a few sheep or goats or an ox like a Jewish man might pay back then.  Rather his price consisted of his very own body and blood that he willingly sacrificed on the tree of the cross as the supreme payment for our sins.  Elsewhere Peter tells us in his 1^st epistle that “it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”  

   How does that make you feel, my friends, to know that the Creator and Ruler of this universe, the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords paid that kind of a price for you so that you could belong to him for all eternity and enjoy the incredible riches and splendors that can only be found in his glorious and perfect presence?  I would hope that it would excite you.  I would hope that it would ignite you to a life of worship, obedience, service, and praise to this Bridegroom who gave his all for you.  But sadly – and nothing heavies my heart more than this – sadly, so many people in our world today and even within the church just go their merry ways day in and day out, paying no attention to and showing no interest in this One who died for them.  It’s not that they reject what Jesus did for them; it’s just that they’re indifferent to it as it has no impact on their lives.  May God forgive us for the times when we have taken lightly the price that our Bridegroom paid for us.

   And that brings us to the next point I want to make.  Let’s call it the preparation of the bride.  One of the perks of being a pastor is that I get to peak into the bride’s room prior to the wedding.  I usually do that just to make sure she’s doing ok and is all ready to go.  But I also look into the room where the groom and his groomsmen are getting dressed and let me tell you, there’s a big difference between the two.  The guys are just kind of sitting around, taking it easy, telling stories, checking with the groom to make sure he still wants to go through with it.  But in the bride’s room it’s all business.  There is a lot of preparation going on as the bridesmaids and the bride’s mother are buzzing around like a hive of busy bees, making sure everything about the bride is just right. 

   Well, when I think of how Christ is preparing his bride, I think of Eph. 5 where Paul tells us that “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”  The washing with water through the Word is a reference to baptism, at which time Christ adopted us as his own and set his seal of ownership upon us.  But notice what else he did.  He cleansed us at that time.  He washed away our sins and made that cleansing forgiveness available to us all the days of our lives.  But he didn’t stop with that.  He also clothed us with his perfect righteousness.  Isaiah 61:10 captures this so well for us when it says: “I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”

   But it gets even better.  For not only is Jesus our Bridegroom preparing us for a glorious future with him, he is also preparing a place for us.  In John 14:2-3 Jesus says: “In my Father's house are many rooms…I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  And oh does this ever tie in once again with what took place in the weddings of Jesus’ day.  After a Jewish man would give a dowry for his bride-to-be, he would pledge to her that he would go and prepare a place for her. Then he would dedicate at least the next 12 months to the preparation of such a place.  That new home would be attached to his father’s house, not at all unlike what the Amish people often times do when one of their sons gets married.  And according to one source I came across, it would be the father of the groom who would give the final approval to his son that the house was now ready for him to receive his bride.  That may very well be behind what I’ve always found to be a rather mysterious passage in the Gospels where Jesus says in Mark 13:32: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” 

   And once the father gave his approval, the groom would lead his groomsmen in a late night torch lit procession to the home of his bride and though she would not know exactly when he was coming, she knew she had to be ready.  When he arrived at her home, he would lead her and all her attendants back to his father’s house where the wedding itself would take place and where the two would then begin their new life together.  And so it will be that once our Heavenly Father gives the signal to his beloved Son, he will come back to this earth, back to the home of his bride, attended by all his angelic groomsmen and he will claim his bride for himself and take all his faithful followers home to live with him forever.  And oh what a home it must be!   As I said in one of my sermons a few weeks ago, it took God only 6 days to create this magnificent and beautiful universe but it’s taken Jesus some 2000 years to prepare our eternal home for us.  So you know that it will be great.  You know it will be something that goes far beyond our ability to comprehend or imagine.

   The question is, are you ready?  Remember I said before that since the bride did not know when the groom was coming, she had to be ready at all times?  Well, likewise, the Bible tells us that we don’t know when our groom is coming, but we know he is.  So we need to be ready.  And according to Scripture there is only one way to do that and that is by placing our faith and trust in him as our one and only Savior from sin, our one and only hope of salvation.  If you do that, my friends, then not only can you be sure that you are part of the bride of Christ, you can also look forward to that day when the One who pursued you and the One who purchased you will come and take you to that unbelievably special place that he is even now preparing for you. 

Amen.