Created and Called: God's Design for Life Together Series
Proposal videos are quite popular on social media. Some of the men asking their women to marry them are quite creative in their execution. I have to say it puts my own proposal to Sharon in the vanilla category. But have you ever seen a video of the period between the engagement and the ceremony? Probably not.
After the proposal, the waiting is interminably difficult. The couple wants to be together, but there are preparations to make for the wedding. Some engagements are long, a year-and-a-half; others are 4-6 months. I’ve known some brides to have a countdown on their calendars or phones and that just makes it worse. As someone once said, “The days are long and the years are short.” Waiting for the day when you can marry your beloved takes forever. But once you’re married, you wonder how the years have slipped away so quickly.
The imagery of a wedding is very important to our series for God’s Design for Life Together. Our Bible begins with a wedding in Genesis and concludes with a wedding feast in Revelation. In between these bookends, God likens his relationship to his people as a marriage. Jesus carries this on having begun his ministry at the wedding in Cana and alluding to himself as the bridegroom.
If you have lived through the engagement period, you know that waiting is not easy. There is excitement but also longing. Anticipation, but also impatience. Often there is anxiety. That is where the church lives today.
We live between promise and fulfillment. Christ has claimed us through the cross, but the wedding day is still to come. We still live in a world fractured by sin. We continue to wrestle with disappointment, suffering, temptation, and brokenness.
This is where Revelation 19:1-10 helps us. It gives us a reminder of the hope we long for. It reminds us that the waiting is not pointless. Revelation shows us three realities about life in the long engagement.
The bridegroom is coming. The wedding day is certain.
1. The Long Engagement: What Happens in Between (1-6)
Growing up in Winnipeg, my family lived 3 kilometers from the old football stadium. On a clear night when the Bombers scored a touchdown, you could hear the cannon boom and the crowd cheer. It gave me chills.
In Revelation 19, a great crowd in heaven gives a huge cheer. They “raise a hallelujah” four times in our passage. What happened? There was a great crash and a great cheer!
Babylon has fallen. This was a great city in the OT, and a metaphor used by John in Revelation. Most scholars believe that John was referring to Rome and its imperial influence. But why not just call a spade a spade? Call it Rome…
Scot McKnight answers, “…because John isn’t just talking about Rome, but he is connecting Rome and the empire to the ongoing story of God’s people. Babylon became for the Jews and early Christians the most graphic image, metaphor, or trope for a city filled with arrogance, sin, injustice, oppression of God’s people, and idolatry.”
Babylon represents every human system that teaches us to live without God. It seduces people with counterfeit loves and distorted values. Babylon tells us that truth is flexible, holiness is foolish, and human beings bear no sacred worth because they are not made in God’s image.
But Babylon has fallen. The great multitude rejoices, the 24 elders rejoice, we rejoice. Why? Hear the crowd: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants,” (1b-2). A brief interpretation of this text tells us that heaven and earth rejoice because the power of sin has been destroyed, the church has been delivered. Shame and regret have been removed; fear has been quashed.
Depending on your timeline, we may come at the meaning of this differently. But what I see here is a betrothal. In the first century, a Jewish wedding began with a betrothal. More than an engagement, it was a legally binding covenant, often lasting a year or more. The groom would pay a “bride price” and then leave to prepare a dwelling for his bride. During this time, the couple was considered married but did not live together.
Jesus has paid the “bride price” on the cross. As Paul said to the Corinthians “you were bought with a price,” (1 Co. 6:20). As such, we belong to the Bridegroom. In Luke 15, Jesus says there is joy in heaven when a sinner repents. When you were born again you were betrothed to Christ. You accepted his proposal. We are in the period of waiting now and must endure the final gasps of seductive whispers of the prostitute. But the bridegroom is coming…
2. Between Betrothal and Ceremony: Getting Ready for the Wedding (7-8)
In the old days, a couple who wanted to get married came to the minister and announced their intention. The very next Sunday morning, all the couples wanting to get married gathered before at the front before the sermon and made their promises. Simple huh?
The preparation time in our modern era is filled with much more detail. Pastors insist on counseling sessions. An apartment or small house must be rented or bought. A wedding dressing is picked out in “Say ‘yes’ to the dress” fashion. And a guest list must be decided upon. It takes time.
Our groom has his work cut out for him. In John 14:2-3, Jesus says to the disciples, “…I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” This language is unmistakably betrothal and preparation terminology taken from the Jewish tradition of arranging a wedding. But what is the bride doing during this time?
She’s getting her dress ready. “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready. It was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure…” There are three observations we need to make…
The bride has “made herself ready” This is not passive. She is actively involved in preparing for the wedding day. We know the bride is the church and the church is actively getting ready for the wedding by pursuing holiness, by working out our salvation in obedience, by remaining faithful in a world that continues to court us, flirt with us, and lead us into idolatry which is adultery. But as we daily choose Jesus, we resist the seduction of Babylon.
Then we read that, “…it was granted her to clothe herself.” There is something important going on here. While the bride makes herself ready (she participates), the ability to be clothed and the garment itself are a gift from God. We can’t afford the dress ourselves. God must provide it. The righteousness required for the wedding dress is not stitched together from our own efforts. Christ clothes his Bride with grace.
Finally, this dress is made of “fine linen, bright and pure.” This is the ideal and perfect wedding attire. “Bright and pure” speaks of purity, spiritual perfection. This fine linen is described as “the righteous deeds of the saints.” Our lives begin to reflect the beauty of the garment Christ has graciously given us. These deeds are righteous because they are performed through Christ, by the power of his Spirit.
When Sharon and I were in this in-between stage, I wanted to be a good groom and do my part in finding a venue. But I suggested things that were not helpful. I needed to stay in my lane. So, I planned the honeymoon. Christ and the church each have a role to play in wedding preparation.
3. The Wedding Feast: Am I Invited? (9-10)
When you hear of a good friend of yours getting married and that the guest list is short, you wonder, “Am I invited?” It’s disappointing to find out you won’t share in the day. There are reasons that go unexplained. It kind of hurts. The wedding day of the Lamb is one wedding you want to be invited to. What does that entail?
The angel said to John, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” It’s a joyful thing to get an invite, but the manner in which you attend is crucial. In Matthew 22 we read of the Parable of the Wedding Feast. A king prepares a wedding feast for his son. Many are invited, but some refuse, and others come dressed in ripped T-shirts and faded jean shorts. That might work in a destination wedding in Tahiti, but in this story, the king actually provided the wedding garment. Those who chose not to wear the gifted clothes are cast out.
What this parable reinforces is that one cannot come to God’s feast on one’s own terms or “goodness.” The wedding garment is provided by the king – his righteousness. This must be put on by faith in Christ.
When the churches John wrote to read these words about the Betrothal time, the period of waiting, they would have groaned at the thought of ongoing suffering, tribulation, imprisonment and death. But what the book of Revelation was meant to do was give them hope that their waiting will be worth it. They were invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb. They are blessed. Jesus is enough. He is enough in the face of inconvenience. He is enough in the face of cancer. He is enough in the face of a culture that pushes its agendas. He is enough when we are hard pressed to conform to the world. Yes, we are put through the ringer, as it were. But God intends to show his glory by putting his servants through this time of refinement and getting them ready for the Big Wedding. And we will rejoice because we know that none of these troubles can take Jesus away. Because Jesus is enough.
The Groom will return. In Jewish tradition, he often comes at night to steal his bride away and bring her to the place he has prepared. A wedding feast followed that could last for days. When Jesus comes, the feast will last for eternity. We will sit together with folks we did not know well and talk as if old friends. We will drink the wine of gladness, and we will be restored to the image of God in the New Creation.
The image of our restoration was beautifully shared and foreshadowed in another earthly wedding:
Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who was paralyzed in a diving accident as a teenager, talks about her wedding day. She says, “I felt awkward as my girlfriends strained to shift my paralyzed body into a cumbersome wedding gown. No amount of corseting and binding my body gave me a perfect shape. The dress just didn’t fit well. Then, as I was wheeling into the church, I glanced down and noticed that I’d accidentally run over the hem of my dress, leaving a greasy tire mark. My paralyzed hands couldn’t hold the bouquet of daisies that lay off-centre on my lap. And my chair, though decorated for the wedding, was still a big, clunky gray machine with belts, gears, and ball bearings. I certainly didn’t feel like the picture-perfect bride in a bridal magazine. I inched my chair closer to the last pew to catch a glimpse of Ken in front. There he was, standing tall and stately in his formal attire. I saw him looking for me, craning his neck to look up the aisle. My face flushed, and I suddenly couldn’t wait to be with him. I had seen my beloved. The love in Ken’s face had washed away all my feelings of unworthiness. I was his pure and perfect bride. How easy it is for us to think that we’re utterly unlovely — especially to someone as lovely as Christ. But he loves us with the bright eyes of a Bridegroom’s love and cannot wait for the day we are united with him forever.”
In this moment of waiting, we feel unattractive and unworthy of our Beloved. We feel paralyzed and imperfect. Yet when our eyes are focused on Jesus, we forget ourselves and filled with love and belonging. Jesus takes us as we are and transforms us from our human brokenness and sin. We become the Bride of Christ You are the Bride of Christ, O Church. We wait with hope. The Bridegroom is coming. The feast is almost ready.
AMEN
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