Heavenly Hallelujahs, Pt. 3
Revelation 19:7-10
Well, we'll open our Bibles now to the nineteenth chapter of Revelation and look again at the marriage of the Lamb...the marriage of the Lamb. What a great privilege it is to dig into the Word of God on the Lord's day. What a joy.
The greatest social event in the ancient biblical world was a wedding. In fact, it's probably the greatest social event in most of the world as it always has been. And it is that wedding imagery which Scripture uses to describe the joyous celebration that will occur when Jesus Christ is joined finally and fully to His beloved people.
The terminology is pretty clear. Let's start at verse 7 and read a few verses and just set the context for the message tonight. Verse 7 of Revelation 19, "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said to me, write, `Blessed are those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.'" And we'll stop at that point.
There is that magnificent marriage imagery which is designed to demonstrate the greatness of the celebration when the Lord is joined to His beloved people. In this imagery, the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ is the groom and His beloved church is the bride. That will be a glorious day. That will be a wonderful day, a day like no other day when we are joined together with our Lord in the fullness of that eternal glory which He has planned for us.
Now I told you last time that repeatedly in the pages of the New Testament the Lord is depicted as a bridegroom. We saw it in Matthew 9:15. We saw even in Matthew 22:1 to 13 and 25:1 to 10 that in the parables there the king's son and the bridegroom is representative of the Lord. We saw John the Baptist referring to the Lord Jesus Christ as the bridegroom in John 3:29 and 30. And then we also noted that the Lord Jesus appears as a bridegroom in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2 and as a husband in Ephesians 5:23 down through 32.
There's no doubt then that at this wedding the One who is presented as the groom is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. That's very obvious because it is clearly in verse 7 stated, "This is the marriage of the Lamb." And then again in verse 9. The Lamb, as I noted for you, being used as a reference of Christ 30 times at least in the book of Revelation.
The question then comes...who is the bride? We noted the answer in 2 Corinthians 11:2 and Ephesians chapter 5 again is that the bride is first and foremost the church. So here in chapter 19 we have the Lord Jesus Christ being joined together in the consummation of the great marriage between Himself and His beloved church.
Now remember that chapter 19 begins with a series of heavenly hallelujahs. You find in verse 1, "Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God." You find again verse 3, "Hallelujah," verse 4, "Hallelujah," and then again in verse 6, "Hallelujah." And this time the "hallelujah" has to do with the marriage, the marriage of the Lamb and His bride has come.
I told you last time and I just briefly remind you that weddings in ancient biblical culture were divided into three components. There was a betrothal and a presentation and then a final ceremony. That might somewhat parallel the idea of an engagement and then some kind of a coming out or engagement party and then ultimately a wedding ceremony in our own culture.
Betrothal was done between two parents. It was a contract that they drew up between themselves, pledging their children to one another in marriage. And I noted for you that very often it was made before the children were ever born because it was more important for those days and those people to select a family than it was an individual. And so we can see the betrothal in the ancient marriage as being somewhat of an illustration of the Lord choosing His own bride before the foundation of the world. Before we were ever born He had already made a covenant with God the Father to take us as His bride.
The second part of a wedding was the presentation. That was the time when the betrothed bride was brought out into the public and presented to all of the publics that were related to her bridegroom and to the families of both parties. And we might suggest to you that that presentation would be for the church the Rapture, when the church is raptured, that is gathered up from the earth, joined with Christians who have already died who have received their glorified bodies and the raptured now triumphant church is taken into heaven and presented in its fullness to all of the heavenly hosts of angels and Old Testament saints as well.
Then when the Lord Jesus comes back at the end of the time of Tribulation to set up His Kingdom, the glorified resurrected exalted church comes back and is now presented to those on earth. And there is the glorious manifestation of the children of God made known, not only to heavenly beings but to those who are still alive on the earth who go into the Kingdom. So the presentation of the bride can take place from the Rapture to the return of Christ in the establishment of His Kingdom. First they're presented in heaven, then they're presented on earth.
And then the culminating thing is the final supper and the ceremony and the consummation of the marriage. We find that final marriage supper, I think, really played out in the millennial kingdom. It's when glorified saints and saints still alive on earth all come together, all recognizing the glorious bride of Christ, all joining in on the festivities and the celebration. And that's the final supper. You say, "It's a long one, isn't it? It lasts a thousand years." Yes, but a thousand years is as a day with the Lord. And the marriage is consummated into the new heavens and the new earth when the bridegroom takes the bride into her eternal home where she will dwell with Him forever.
That's the beautiful picture that is behind this text. Betrothal in eternity past. Presentation begins with the Rapture. The church is presented in heaven. The second coming presented on earth. The final supper through the Kingdom leading to the consummation and the bride goes into her eternal home in the new heaven and the new earth. This complete and final union then, this ceremony between Jesus Christ and His church is about to be accomplished here. The final great supper taking place in the Kingdom. And so we read in verse 7, "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come." It's about to happen. It's on the edge, on the brink of occurring.
Then this statement we noted last time, "His bride has made herself ready." His bride has made herself ready. She is ready now. No sin, no impurity, she is a flawless, spotless, blameless virgin without blemish. She has been presented in a glorified condition before the throne. We might even suggest that there's another part of her being made ready. When the church is raptured do you know the first thing that happens after the church is taken up into glory? Well, you should know that, the Apostle Paul told us exactly what it is. It says that when the Lord Jesus comes and He takes us to be with Himself, listen to what's going to happen. "We must all appear before...what?...the judgment seat of Christ," 2 Corinthians 5:10. We're going to receive rewards for what we have one. The useless things will be burned up and all that will be left to judge will be those priceless valuable things. And the Lord will then reward His people.
Perhaps that reward constitutes part of the readying of the bride. As the wood, hay and stubble is burned up, according to 1 Corinthians 3, and the gold, silver and precious stones remained, the bride then becomes bedecked, as it were, in majestic beauty. Thus she is made ready be being purged. She is made ready by being rewarded. She is made ready by being cleansed of all iniquity. She is made ready by being made more beautiful because of her eternal reward. The bride has been glorified. The bride has been rewarded. The bride has made herself ready.
Now let's pick it up where we left off in verse 8, and here we see another feature of her readiness, other than the one I mentioned in the Bema Seat, rather the first one. "It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints." And there, of course, is the purification. She puts on what was given to her by God. She puts on the garments of cleanliness. She puts on righteous acts.
Now listen, when we were saved we were clothed in righteousness. What kind of righteousness? Really the righteousness of Christ, right?, imputed to us. But now the glorified church has a righteousness all its own. It is not just a garment of righteousness put over her to cover her sin, it is righteous acts that characterize this bride. She is righteous not just on the outside, not just with a covering, but she is righteous through and through.
That is depicted in the fine linen, bright and clean. Now this is a...this is a marvelous concept here. It has the idea of holiness, purity, spotlessness. Such garments appear earlier in the book of Revelation. Go back to chapter 15 verse 6, this will help you a little bit. Here we meet the seven angels who come with the seven final judgments. And it says, "The seven angels who had the seven plagues came out of the temple...notice this...clothed in linen, clean and bright." There again we see this kind of garment on the angels. This kind of garment that marks out those who are not just covered with a holiness not their own but who are holy in themselves, these are the holy garments worn in that particular vision by heavenly angels.
Fine linen was the most expensive and the loveliest of cloth. The word "bright," lampron, means glistening, shining, radiant. "Clean," katharon, means just that. In fact, the same word appears in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, verses 18 and 21 and is translated "pure...pure." It also could have the idea because in verses 18 and 21 it says, "Pure gold like pure glass." Pure gold like transparent glass. So what...what is on the bride here is this expensive, magnificent, beautiful, fine linen radiant, shining, pure, transparent...it is a transparent kind of brilliance. It's a kind of glory, isn't it? It's a kind of Shekinah. And here we see the church made righteous, the church fully righteous.
By the way, would you look down at verse 14. "And the armies which are in heaven," that are the armies which are in Christ when He returns when He comes out of heaven on a white horse, "The armies which are in heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses." In this vision we see Christ returning and as He returns, all the saints are with Him.
You say, "Is this talking about glorified saints?" Yes. "But don't angels wear those garments? Couldn't it be speaking about them as well?" Yes. But I think you see here primarily the picture of the saints. And he is building on the description back in verse 8 when he describes them the same way in verse 14. The bride then, all glorious and all radiant, returns with her bridegroom for her presentation on earth. She is glorious, radiant, magnificent, pure, and bright, the chaste virgin ready for the final ceremony. And her purity is the righteous acts of the saints. She will no longer have only an imputed righteousness and a partial righteousness, but an imparted perfection. At the Bema judgment, at the judgment seat of Christ, all the detracted from her glory, all the detracted from her beauty was burned up and only her magnificent beauty remains and her purity. And this is the glorious church made perfect. This is the glory that was promised in 1 John 3 when it said we will be like Him. The glory promised in Romans 8 when it said it doesn't yet appear what we'll be like but the glorious manifestation of the children of God will make it known.
Now all this marriage imagery is to center our attention on the final all-glorious union of Jesus Christ with His beloved church. And this is that for which we wait. This is what we live for. This is the great climax of our lives.
I was thinking to myself today, I'm sure our attendance will be low tonight, but it's so difficult for me to understand how anybody could be indifferent to the greatest event in all of redemptive history. The very reason why God chose you before the world began in the first place was to bring this event to pass. What kind of a spiritual commentary is it on us that we're indifferent to this? It's highly unlikely that if we were living in dire circumstances, if we were living in oppression, if we were living under some kind of tyranny, if we were grasping for every morsel of food and every hope for another breath that we wouldn't be ecstatic to hear of this kind of joy in the future, really. We have become satiated, glutted and satisfied with the world's fare and those things which are far beyond that, believe it or not, have little interest to us. That's sad. Can we say with the Apostle Paul, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I've kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all those who have...what?...loved His appearing."
Do we love His appearing? Is that where our affection is? Or have we affection for many other passing things? And what about Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, "Our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory." What would we say about a bride who had waited years and years and years and years for the coming of the bridegroom and was indifferent to it? Rather than having a heart ecstatic with hope.
This is the consummation of God's plan. This is the pinnacle. This is it. This is what we live for. This is what we die for. The day we wait for when we are joined with our beloved bridegroom.
Now the celebration then begins, of course, for us at the Rapture of the church, at the judgment seat when we are purified and rewarded. Then we come back to earth, then the glorious Kingdom goes on. But go over to chapter 21 for a moment, just to take you all the way to the consummation of God's plan. The whole thing really never is consummated until John says, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth." That means the Kingdom is over. The millennial earth is gone. The universe as we know it is gone. The restored, renewed earth is gone. And now there is a new heaven and a new earth. The old one has been destroyed. The elements have melted with fervent heat as Peter said. "And now there is a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth passed away. There is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, `Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and He shall dwell among them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be among them.'" That's the consummation. That's when all the bride is taken to the new heaven and the new earth to dwell forever with the bridegroom.
Go down to verse 9. "One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the last plagues came and spoke with me saying, `Come here, I'll show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.' And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God."
You say, "Well is the bride the church or is the bride the city?" The answer is yes. The bride is the church that occupies the city. It becomes the bridal city. But listen carefully to what I say to you. The bride is distinctively the church, but it is more than the church. At the end of the time of the Tribulation Daniel says that the Old Testament saints are going to be resurrected. They will be gathered together with the New Testament church. During the Tribulation, Tribulation saints will be gathered together into heaven, into glory. They too will be a part of that redeemed humanity that occupies the Kingdom, that glorified humanity. During the time of the millennial Kingdom, people on earth will believe, will be born again, will come to the knowledge of God. Many of them will be translated, transformed into that glorious band of glorified saints. All of those saints collected not only from the church but resurrected bodies from the Old Testament era, resurrected Tribulation saints, redeemed Kingdom saints are all going to make up the final form of the bride and occupy that glorious bridal city, the new Jerusalem.
So the picture expands. And I'll say more about that in a moment.
Let's look at verse 9 then. Verse 9, "And he said to me, `Write, blessed are those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.'" This is very important. This is beatitude number four. A beatitude is something that begins with blessed. This is beatitude number four. You remember the first beatitude in the book of Revelation? The first promise of blessing? "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things written in it for the time is near." The last beatitude comes in chapter 22 and verse 14, "Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in by the gates into the city." This is beatitude number four. It is a book of blessing. It is a book of benedictions. This one says, "Blessed, or happy, joyous, satisfied, fulfilled," any of those words will suffice, "are those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb."
Now stop right there. Who is that? Not the bride. Did you ever know a bride who got an invitation? You don't send an invitation to the bride, she doesn't need one, she sends invitations. Or the bridegroom sends invitations. Nobody sends an invitation to the bride, she's not an invited guest, she's the bride. Brides aren't invited to the wedding, so who is this? Who is this group who are those invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb? Who are the guests?
Go with me back to Matthew. Matthew chapter 8...Matthew chapter 8 verse 5, "When Jesus entered Capernaum a Centurion came to Him entreating Him, or pleading with Him, and saying, `Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home suffering great pain.' And He said to him, `I will come and heal him.' But the Centurion answered and said, `Lord, I'm not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed.'" Hmm, great faith. "For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me and I say to this one go and he goes, and another come and he comes and to my slave do this and he does it." He's saying, "I understand Your power, I understand Your authority."
"Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following Him, `Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. And I say to you that many shall come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the Kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness in the place...in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"
Now I just want to draw you to one thought here. Jesus identifies faith and says the Kingdom will be made up of the faithful. They'll come from east and west all over the world and they will recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven. And while I believe that that reclining and that Kingdom can be the spiritual Kingdom, I think also it has messianic reality attached to it. I think Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are going to be in the Kingdom, right? They're going to be glorified and they're going to come back for the Kingdom. They're going to be there. They're part of the invited guests. They're not the church, a part of redeemed Israel. There will be many others who are Jews, truly saved, proselytes to Judaism, Luke 13:28 says, "When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God," I believe Old Testament saints are going to be a part of that, all the prophets, all the faithful, all the priests, all the believers redeemed by grace through faith, Enoch and Noah, all of them are going to be raised, according to Daniel chapter 3, they're going to be raised, I believe at the coming of Jesus Christ to set up His Kingdom. All of the Hebrews 11 heroes that we referred to this morning, they're all going to be there in the Kingdom. They're going to be the invited guests. The greatest Old Testament prophet who ever lived, John the Baptist, he'll be there. He died, too, before the cross and before the resurrection.
John serves as a good model for us. He was never a part of the visible church of Jesus Christ. He belonged to and he died before the Holy Spirit inaugurated a new dispensation. That is why the great John the Baptist says in the third chapter of his gospel, "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom which stands and hears Him, rejoices greatly." John the Baptist calls himself really the friend of the bridegroom, an invited guest. He's not part of the church. He's a guest. He's a friend who stands and rejoices in the favor of God on the couple that are being married. Matthew 11:11 speaking of John the Baptist, our Lord said, "Verily I say to you, among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." Jesus said he's the greatest man that ever lived and yet he said he that is least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
The bride is something very special. The least of us who have been saved, the humble of us...the humblest of us who belong to the bride of Christ are something very special. Those Old Testament saints are not the bride, they are guests invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, special guests.
Now somebody is going to say, "Wait a minute here. Since..it's all of grace anyway, why should we be treated special?" I don't know...I don't know the answer to that except to say we shouldn't. "Why should the church be the bride and Israel just the guests?" Well ask another question. Why should Israel have been the covenant people in the first place and everybody else left out? I don't know. God designed it and He can do whatever He wants, He's God. But would you please remember this, we're only talking about imagery here. That's all. We're talking about imagery rather than reality in this sense, that the picture of a marriage is just a picture and the imagery of the bride is just a symbol of intimate union. And the point is simply that the Lord is going to take the church to Himself pure and holy and rewarded. And He's going to put on the greatest celebration the world has ever known. But Old Testament saints are going to be there, too. And they'll be in on the celebration just with everybody else. All the proselyte Gentiles, all the Jews who believed before the cross though technically they're not the bride anymore than we are Israel. And we each have unique roles in the Kingdom, Israel will rule in the Kingdom. The Apostles will sit on twelve thrones over the twelve tribes of Israel. The Jews will be exalted so that they will be bringing Gentiles to the seeing of the Messiah. In fact, the prophet said ten Gentiles will be hanging on the garment of every Jew. It's their Kingdom, it's the throne of David.,
And in the picture that is given in the Old Testament of the Kingdom, it looks like it belongs to Israel exclusively and in the picture that is given to the church in the New Testament, it looks like it's ours. And that's the way God would have it. It's just imagery. The reality is, we'll all be there and we'll all be enjoying the celebration. And yet there's a distinction and always has been between the church and Israel.
We have to include those who were saved in the Tribulation, Jews and Gentiles. All Israel will be saved, according to Romans 11, and of course an innumerable number of Gentiles according to Revelation 7 that can't be numbered. They have all died, they've all gone to glory. They'll all come back with the bride to earth. They'll all be here for the celebration of the Kingdom. They'll all go into the new heaven and the new earth. They'll all occupy the bridal city when it descends into the new heaven and the new earth, and therefore they'll all ultimately be encompassed in the same intimacy with the living God.
All the guests at a wedding enjoy the celebration. You've been to a wedding. You just go into the celebration after the wedding, however it's set up, and everybody is there, a variety of people, an assortment of people from different families and different locales and everybody lands with the same purpose and that is to celebrate. And people are looking around and saying, "Who's that...and who's she...and who's he...where did he come from...and I don't think we've met him, he's not in our church,
is he...I've never seen them before." But the celebration draws people from everywhere and so will this. And in the end they'll all be brought together in that eternal bridal city of the new Jerusalem.
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