Revelation 19:7-9
Welcome! Since August we have been working
our way through the book of Revelation. Our pace, on average, has been about
one chapter a week. But this week and next week we come seemingly to a
screeching halt. We will look at other passages of scripture beyond the book of
Revelation, but in Revelation, we only cover three verses this week and only
one verse next week. Why?
If you were present at John Farmer’s last
several messages in Revelation, he has had a wonderful chart that outlines the
Book of Revelation. If you remember, the final part of this chart, representing
the last few chapters of Revelation, was represented with smiley faces. We are
on the verge, the cusp of the real smiley face stuff, but this Christmas
season, we arranged this “screeching halt” so that you would have to wait. At
this point in Revelation, Christ is about to return at last; Satan is about to
be defeated. Soon. But not yet. I hope and trust that you long for that day as
I do, when all is set right, when we begin the happily ever after, an eternity beyond imagining in the very presence of
the Lord.
Longing, waiting, hoping – these are
appropriate feelings to have in the Christmas season. I know that some of you
have family traditions involving advent, these days before Christmas. It is
good and appropriate to long for Christ, to long for our future eternity with
Him, to long for being again with our loved ones who are in Him, to eagerly
anticipate our new bodies, free from pain and disease, and to long for our
fully renewed hearts that will no longer seek their own way but seek Christ and
Christ alone. Most of all we should long for Christ Himself, called the Good
Shepherd, yet also the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, called the
King of kings and Lord of lords, yet also the friend of lowly sinners (meaning
you and me, although in heaven we will no longer be sinners, because Christ
will complete His work in us). Seeing the connection between how the prophets
longed for Christ’s first coming and how we should long for His second coming
has given me a fresh and wonderful new perspective (literally wonderful, as in
full of wonder) on the whole Christmas season, and my hope and desire for the
messages this week and next is that they will also give you a fresh longing and a renewed desire for Christ.
Let’s look at our three verses in
Revelation. We are in chapter 19, and what has just happened in chapters 17 and
18 is that Babylon has finally fallen. What is meant exactly by Babylon is
somewhat a mystery, but it seems clear that it represents an entire world
system, an entire worldview that is shockingly similar to what we see
throughout the world today. Chapter 17 is filled with images of wealth, of
merchants, of buying and selling, of great ships of trade. Now these things in
and of themselves are not sin, but when they become your God, when you reject
God in place of them, that is certainly sin. In Chapter 18 it says, “Your
merchants were the world’s most important people; by your magic spell all the
nations were led astray.”
The Babylon of Chapters 17 and 18 is not
only consumed with lust after wealth and trade; it is also firmly opposed to
God and to God’s people, so much so that extreme persecution, persecution unto
death for believers, was the norm. Chapter 18 also says, “In her was found the
blood of prophets and of God’s holy people, of all who have been slaughtered on
the earth.”
Again, thinking of parallels between
Christ’s first and second coming, I am reminded of Herod. From Matthew Chapter
2:
After
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from
the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We
saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him.” When King Herod heard
this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. – Matt. 2:1-3
The Greek word for “disturbed” is tarasso, and it is a strong word. It is
used to describe the terror people like Zacharias felt when they saw an angel.
It is used when the disciples were scared out of their minds when they saw
Jesus walking across the lake to them in their boat seemingly like a ghost. And
it is the word Jesus uses when He tells His disciples that it is time for Him
to die so that those who believe in Him can live, be forgiven and be reconciled
to God through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. In John 12:27, He says,
Now my
soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No,
it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! – John 12:27-28
And so Herod and the entire Jewish
establishment was more than disturbed by this news of the promised Messiah,
they were panicked. As a professor, the analogy that comes to me is that of
catching a cheater on a test in the middle of the very act of cheating. But,
fortunately for me, most cheaters on tests don’t then go on to plot how to
murder their professors. But this is exactly what Herod and the religious
establishment did. It took angelic intervention to prevent their plan of taking
Jesus’ life while an infant from coming to fruition.
We have come to associate the Christmas
season with everything warm and fuzzy – even the Christian radio stations play
songs like Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire – but as John Bullard reminded us
in his message a few weeks ago, the real Christmas story is much darker. From
Matthew 2, King Herod demanded that the Magi, after they found the child, report
on His location to him, but the Magi, after joyously visiting with the Holy
Child and Mary (and presumably Joseph), were warned about what was going on in
a dream, and so they did not report back to Herod, but instead went home
another way. Then Joseph was also warned
in a dream to flee, and so he took his family in the middle of the night and
escaped, going all the way to Egypt as per the angelic instructions in the
dream.
What happened next is not typically
emphasized at Christmastime, but it is what happened:
When
Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he
gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two
years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
– Matt. 2:16
Murder – on a grand scale. This is, through
the history of the world, what ultimately comes out of religious persecution. The
devil is a murderer – has been from the beginning – and he stirs up the hearts
of men without Christ to do his work for him. It goes on in many places in the
world today. For believers who are in constant danger, for whom family members
and friends and pastors and others have been killed, Christmas is not about
warm fuzzies but about the sure promise of a Savior being fulfilled.
This brings me back to that verse in
Revelation 18, speaking of Babylon, “In her was found the blood of prophets and
of God’s holy people, of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.” And so,
although it is scary to think of an end to a world economic system, if such a
system includes murdering believers on a grand scale and leading countless
others astray, it is appropriate – no matter the cost – that it be put to an
end. And so Babylon – whatever Babylon symbolizes in its entirety – is
destroyed.
And so Revelation 19 begins with shouts of
praise coming up from heaven, rejoicing over the just end of Babylon, of “the
great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries.” The great
multitude then shouts Hallelujah, giving praise that God reigns, and then we
have today’s primary passage:
Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the
wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. Fine linen,
bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous
acts of God’s holy people.) Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are
those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These
are the true words of God.” – Rev. 19:7-9
The picture here is that of a
wedding. The two most momentous events in the human experience are births and
weddings. Christ’s first coming was for a birth, His own birth, and Christ’s
second coming is for a wedding, Christ’s own wedding.
We are to be the bride of Christ,
all believers, people who have made a profession of faith in Christ. Faith in
Christ means that we agree with Him that we are sinners separated from a holy
and perfect God by our sins, and that we, by faith, receive the gift of
forgiveness paid for through Jesus’ death on a cross. We the bride of Christ,
are not to just have knowledge of who Jesus is, but are to enter into
relationship with Him. We do this now, here on earth, but its culmination will
be at the wedding of the Lamb. The reconciliation that comes through entering
into relationship with Him is not the end of the story; it is only the
beginning, the beginning of an eternal, unimaginable, close, intimate
relationship with God.
Believers will spend eternity in
heaven with Christ. What will that eternity be like? Will Christ be some
distant king that we can only have a brief audience with every several thousand
years? Will we never really get to know Him up close? No. Our minds cannot
comprehend the reality of what heaven will exactly be like, but the imagery of
a wedding makes it clear that our relationship with Christ will be close,
intimate. Marriage and parenthood are the most intimate relationships we have
in this life, and both are used in various places to describe our ultimate
relationship with Christ. We will know Him better than our own children, better
than our parents, better than our spouses. And of course He will know us
completely (He already does). And He won’t just know us intimately, He will
love us. There is a verse that talks about how there won’t really be marriages
in heaven. I think maybe the reason is that our relationship with Christ and
with other believers through the shared Holy Spirit will be so wonderful, so
perfect, that our old earthly-style relationships will pale and be seen as
almost nothing in comparison. We are to be the bride of Christ! Let that begin
to sink in.
But notice that these verses aren’t
in and of themselves the wedding, are they? It is a wedding pronouncement. Weddings in Bible times
began with a betrothal, then a pronouncement, and finally the main ceremony.
The betrothal was typically between parents; it was a legal contract in which
each family pledged that one of their children that would eventually marry one of
the other family’s children. Sometimes betrothals were made even before the
children were born; this would be an extreme example of an arranged marriage.
At the risk of overextending an analogy, I think we can argue that our
betrothal has also been arranged before we were ever born. God knew we would be
unfaithful to Him, that the fall of Adam and Eve would occur; and so, I think
we can conclude that sending Jesus to earth as a baby, who would grow up and
then die for the sins of mankind, was the plan from the beginning. Being
unfaithful, we were not the kind of bride anyone would want, but Jesus’
sacrifice became our righteousness;
we have an imputed righteousness through faith that is “in Him.” He is our
righteousness; this is because He Himself never sinned, yet He was punished a
sinner’s punishment. That punishment therefore can pay for our sin, if we
accept His gift of salvation through believing in Him. I believe all these
plans were laid in place before man was ever born. And so the marriage was, you
could say, an arranged marriage. But although prearranged, it was also in some
ways like the Western kind of marriage, in that we have to say “Yes.” And we
are not forced to do so. Nobody will be a part of the bride of Christ who does
not want to be there. This is really what repentance and asking Christ into
your life is all about – it is saying “Yes” to His marriage proposal.
So what we have here in Rev. 19 is
not the betrothal, but, I believe, Part 2, the wedding pronouncement, or the
“presentation.” In a traditional Bible era marriage, the presentation consisted
of publically announcing the upcoming marriage and showing off the bride-to-be
and groom-to-be, and that is exactly what we have here.
There is an emphasis here on
clothing – fine linen, bright and clean. Notice that these were given to her;
she didn’t attempt to make them herself. This is a good picture for how we are
clothed with the righteousness of Christ. This is a theme in Scripture, even in
the Old Testament. Consider these verses:
May Your priests
be clothed with Your righteousness. – Psalm 132:9a
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 His righteousness, as a
bridegroom adorns his head like a priest. – Isaiah 61:10a
In contrast to clothing ourselves with
Christ’s righteousness, we can clothe ourselves with our own puny attempts at
righteousness. That this doesn’t work is another theme of Scripture.
Now Joshua was
dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those
who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.” Then he said to
Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”
Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on
his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by. –
Zech. 3:3-5
And then, back to our passage in
Revelation, we have “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of
the Lamb!” This is our fourth “Blessed,” our fourth beatitude in Revelation. If
you have been here through this series, do you remember how many there are all
together? Seven. We have spoken in the past about the prevalence of sevens in
Revelation – especially the obvious ones, such as the seven letters to the
seven churches, the seven spirits, the seven seals, seven eyes, seven horns,
seven trumpets, seven thunders, and so on. But here are some less obvious ones,
from http://www.davidpfield.com/published-articles/seven-blessings.pdf:
· Seven times the word
“Christ” is used.
· Seven times Christ
announces His coming.
· Seven times we have the
phrase “The Lord God Almighty.”
· Seven times “Amen”
appears.
· Seven times the book
mentions prophets.
· Seven times the phrase
“The one who sits on the throne” is used.
· The Spirit is referred
to fourteen times (2 sevens).
· Jesus by name is
mentioned fourteen times (2 sevens).
· The Lamb is mentioned by
name twenty-eight times (4 sevens).
I mention this simply because there is
amazing – for lack of a better term – literary depth in the Book of Revelation,
and not just in Revelation standing alone, but in how it also relates to the
rest of Scripture. Next week, God willing, I will talk more about this.
This fourth beatitude says those invited to
the wedding supper of the Lamb are blessed. Who is that? This is not a very
simple question. Perhaps we are not meant to think about it too much. We are
the bride, so I don’t think it means us. Brides don’t need invitations to their
own weddings. Perhaps it means the heavenly host.
“These are the true words of God.”
This is not fiction – it is not wishful thinking, or to be more precise, this
is not only wishful thinking. It is
wishful thinking that happens to be true. If you have given yourself to Christ,
you are going to experience this
almost unbelievable future. Wearing the fine linen that has been given to you,
you will stand at the great announcement of the wedding of the Lamb, and you
will be part of the redeemed bride of Christ.
Last week John had two songs in his
message; this week we have one. My desire is that this song would grow your
longing for Christ, that like the prophets of old, you would peer into these still
mysterious prophecies and long for their fulfillment, that you would long for
the second appearing of our Savior and King and Bridegroom. Although we may not
understand all the details (yet), He will
come – these are the true words of God.
All Who Hear
Young Oceans
A desert voice calls out
Lend him your ear, your heart
Though we are scattered stones,
We're not alone
So we, the road, prepare
For heaven's eternal heir
At last, our Savior's near
Let all, who hear, make way
And may these hearts
Prepare, a place
What is this grace divine?
That earth and sky align
With leveled souls laid bare,
Let all, who hear, make way
And may these hearts
Prepare, a place
For 'God with us'
Will come to save
And surely He shall comfort those He loves
And so we wait
A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley. – Isaiah 40:3-4
“Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” – Isaiah 40:5
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel (God with us). – Isaiah 7:14
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6
“and this is His name by which He will be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’’ – Jer. 23:6
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” – Rev. 1:8
And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” – Rev. 4:8
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” – Rev. 22:17a
And let the one who hears say, “Come.” – Rev. 22:17b
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