Eternity: Our Pilgrimage to the Marriage Supper (Revelation 19:6-9)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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Our second lesson is taken from the book of Revelation, chapter 19, verses 6 to 9.

Revelation 19:6–9

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory.

For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, Write this blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And he said to me, These are the true words of God.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Let's pray.

Holy, gracious, everlasting God, we're gathered here by grace and grace alone.

And that grace belongs to you.

So we pray, Father, that by grace we would make a faithful pilgrimage to feast with our Lord Jesus in your wonderful kingdom.

All this we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, they say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

You've probably heard that before.

That's an ancient proverb of one sort or another.

And far be it for me to contradict ancient wisdom, but I do want to suggest that there's been at least one thing that's happened before that single step's been taken, and that's this.

A destination has been determined.

Otherwise, we're just aimlessly wandering.

Unless I want to get to if I want to get to Ottawa to visit my folks, I know I'm going to take Highway 7 or the 401 if it's snowy.

If I don't have a destination in mind, who knows where I'm going to end up?

You know what I'm talking about.

If we want to make a journey, we need to have a destination in mind.

And friends, I want to suggest to us that the Christian life is a journey.

It's not an aimless wandering, but it's a pilgrimage.

Here's what the Apostle Paul says in Philippians chapter 3.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Paul is saying this to the church gathered in this first century city of Philippi.

He says, One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those of us who are mature think in this way.

And the Apostle Paul gives an invitation for Christians to join him in this straining forward towards the goal.

He says, Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul wants us to know that the Christian life is a life with a goal, it has a destination.

We are headed somewhere.

Is that how we're inclined to think of the Christian life?

Or does it end up feeling like trudging from one day to the next, not really sure what we're doing or where we're going?

It's easy to get caught in the weeds sometimes.

The Apostle Paul says he has a goal in mind, and so he strains forward towards that goal.

It requires effort, it requires application.

It's the sort of thing that's portrayed in something like Pilgrim's Progress.

Maybe some of us have read Pilgrim's Progress.

It's one of the great works of English literature.

It's an allegory of the Christian life.

Christian's journey from the city of destruction to the celestial city and all the trials in between.

It's an analogy of straining forward towards the goal.

But Christian, the main character of Pilgrim's Progress, always kept the goal in mind.

Do we keep the goal in mind?

I have to confess, sometimes the goal seems pretty obscure to me.

Or it seems pretty low resolution.

And when it seems pretty low resolution, the Christian life starts to feel more like a wandering and less like a pilgrimage, less like a journey.

And friends, I want to suggest to us as we dive into our new sermon series here, this Lenten sermon series, that the Christian life is a pilgrimage into eternity.

The Christian life is a pilgrimage into eternity.

And if that's true, then it raises the question: how do we understand our destination?

We ought to understand something about our destination if we're going to strain forward towards the goal.

So over the next five weeks or so together, we're going to talk about things that pertain to eternity.

We're going to talk about heaven and hell and a Christian's death and the kingdom come and the new creation where our Lord Jesus Christ reigns.

We want to understand the goal to which we press forward so that we can make this pilgrimage.

And I want to do this very purposefully because I can't help but okay, let me tell you what got me really thinking about this.

This was an interview of a theologian I follow with Billy Graham.

And Billy Graham was very elderly, he was a few weeks away from death at this point.

And this theologian asks Billy Graham, he says, he asked him, Do you have any concerns, you know, for evangelical Christianity moving forward?

Do you know this thing you've invested your whole life, your whole ministry in?

And Billy Graham's answer amounted to something like this Christians, I'm not sure, at least evangelical Christians, have lost sight of the things that pertain to eternity.

He went on to share more, but I just can't help but wonder if that's true in my own heart.

How much time do I spend thinking about my destination?

I confess when I'm on Highway 7 in the 401, I've got Ottawa in mind the whole time.

I mean, maybe I go into highway hypnosis sometimes, you know what I'm talking about.

But I've got the destination in mind.

I've never lost that.

Can we lose the destination?

So, over the course of this series, I'm I want us to dive into eternity with a few purposes in mind.

I want us to be able to articulate what God's word has to say about the goal, about eternity.

And being able to articulate it, I want us to be able to anticipate it, anticipate seeing God's promises fulfilled, because that is for us the hope towards which we strain.

And in anticipating it, I hope that we gain a renewed confidence and a renewed comfort for those of us who struggle with our own mortal condition.

We live in the valley of the shadow of death, don't we?

And we need comfort.

Eternity is the great comfort of a Christian.

Do we find comfort in it?

Does it give us confidence to walk the Christian life?

I hope that through this study we can gain a renewed comfort and confidence in eternity.

And finally, I hope we get a sense of direction.

I hope that we get a sense of this is the way I need to go to strain towards the goal because that goal is worth the effort.

It's worth the journey.

And Christ is walking with me.

So the question in front of us today is what's the goal?

Where are we headed?

If the Christian life is a pilgrimage into eternity, where does eternity begin?

The answer, I think, at least it comes to a surprise to me.

I grew up in the church.

And when I started wrestling around with this, I realized, boy, this goes a lot more deeply than I think it does.

At least I thought it did at first.

The goal of eternity, the goal of the Christian life, is a marriage.

It's a wedding.

In fact, it's a marriage supper, is how it's phrased in Revelation 19, 19.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

It is this marriage supper that sits at the hinge point between this world we occupy and the world to come, our experience of this creation and the renewed creation in Christ.

It is this marriage supper that sits between what is and what is to come.

It is the goal towards which our whole Christian life is oriented, whether or not we realize it.

But if we come to realize it, if we bring it this hope deeply into our hearts, I suspect it has everything to do with each and every step we take on the journey.

And it gives us hope.

So what's so significant about this marriage supper we read about in Revelation 19, verse 9?

Revelation 19:9

Well, I want us to zoom out a little bit because we're going to understand what's going on in this passage.

We need to have some background here.

We need to have some biblical background and we need some practical background on what the author has in mind about a wedding.

So, buckle up.

Bear with me here.

The first thing we should understand about this goal of all of history, all of the Christian life heading towards this goal of a wedding feast, is that this language is not something new and introduced at the very end of the Bible in Revelation 19.

Suddenly a wedding comes out of nowhere.

It's not true.

We get to look at the whole arc of Scripture, and we get to see that all the story of the Bible has led to this point of the union between God and his beloved people.

In fact, the very institution of marriage at the beginning of creation in Genesis is meant to point us towards that even greater union.

Marriage is a sign, it signifies something beyond itself.

It signifies God's everlasting, committed, faithful love for his people and his desire to unite them to himself in everlasting and glorious union.

Marriage points beyond itself, and that's why Christians take marriage so seriously, because this is a gift that God has given us to point us to the goal of history.

And the Bible has always understood that in God's relationship with his people, his Old Testament people Israel, his New Testament people, the church, it's understood that God is the groom, and his people are the bride.

That's how God thinks about his people.

He thinks about his people the way a groom thinks about the bride.

Some of us are married here, some of us remember our wedding day, some of us perhaps remember what it was to see our bride coming through the church doors.

I sure do.

I remember that feeling welling up somewhere deep inside me.

God feels that infinitely more for us, his people, his beloved, his bride.

So Bishop Tom Wright writes this about Revelation 19.

He says, the idea of such a wedding that we see here, of course, goes to the ancient Jewish tradition of Israel as Yahweh's bride.

Wooed in the wilderness, married at Sinai, unfaithful for many generations, and eventually cast away, but then wooed and won over all again into a covenant renewal that would result in the renewal of the whole creation.

God has long been the bridegroom to his bride.

To Israel, he says in Isaiah 54, your husband is your maker, whose name is the Lord of hosts, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth.

But the story of the Bible is such that God's people forsake this marriage covenant.

They reject the faithful love of their husband and maker.

Israel forsakes the Lord's covenant, and adult or idolatry, worshipping other lowercase G gods, becomes akin to adultery.

So we read Jeremiah chapter three surely as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, so you, Israel, have dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.

This is a loving husband grieved, but the unfaithfulness of his beloved.

Nevertheless, God remains the faithful spouse.

Isaiah 54 goes on to say that with great compassion I, the Lord, will gather you.

In an outburst of anger, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting, everlasting loving kindness, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your Redeemer.

He hid his face for a moment.

But how long does his loving kindness last?

It's everlasting.

So that's why we can land in Isaiah 62, 5, which says, As a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you.

How does that land on you?

Is that how we're inclined to think that the Lord thinks about his people?

God rejoices over you, his bride.

This is what's acted out in every ancient Jewish wedding, which is exactly what the author of Revelation and the author of Isaiah 25 exactly has in mind.

They've got a Jewish wedding in mind.

Let me tell you a little bit of a Jewish wedding, because I knew you were dying to ask.

I owe a lot, by the way, to a Bible teacher named Jay McCarrell on this.

I could send you an hour and a half long video if you're interested in unpacking this more and more.

But um let me tell you a little bit about a Jewish wedding.

In some ways it's it's similar, the courtship process is similar to what we have, but in other ways it's different.

You know, Rachel and I had, I think, the typical uh uh process, so to speak, of dating and then getting engaged, and then of course you have the wedding day and you're married.

And uh and the commitment ramps up, right, with each kind of stage.

Dating is relatively low commitment.

Sure, you're getting more and more serious, but breakups happen, right?

And then of course you get engaged, and that's a serious social commitment, but well, we know that can still get broken up, right, if that needs to, and then you get married, and that's a covenant.

It's interesting, by the way, sometimes to ask folks, what is marriage?

Because sometimes the answer is, uh it's like we kind of know what it is, but it's hard to articulate.

And there might be many ways to frame it, but the Bible's way of framing it is that it's a covenant.

Then, of course, the question is, well, what's a covenant?

Covenant is more than just a binding promise.

It is that, but it's more than that.

This marriage covenant represents something so fundamental.

It is taking two people and making them as they were physically and spiritually one.

That's why Genesis says they became one flesh.

That's the spiritual reality being played out in this covenant.

Two are becoming one.

So here's what's playing out in a Jewish wedding.

It's not quite like that process, but engagement, we might say, Rachel and I got engaged, I think, in our mid-twenties.

Engagement would happen, let's say, at age three, four, or five.

And it would happen between two fathers who make this agreement that my son is going to marry your daughter.

And then they would, I know that's kind of a weird thing, but that's the way it is, and this is the ancient Near East, right?

So an agreement gets made, my son is going to be marrying your daughter, and a covenant gets drawn up.

Now there's an agreement between this family and this family that this union is going to happen and it's going to strengthen these two families, and it's going to enable these two children to live a flourishing life they otherwise couldn't on their own.

Getting married for romance comes a lot later, right?

But here we are.

Engagement happens, and kids grow up knowing who it is that they're going to be marrying.

And now maybe they're in their late adolescence, what we'd call adolescence, and they're ready to take the next step.

So from engagement, they get betrothed.

At the betrothal, these two fathers would pull out this uh covenant, this agreement that they've written up.

They would ratify it, and then there would be a ceremony, and there's so many fascinating details I could share, but let me just share one crucial part of this ceremony, and that's this the bride-to-be and the bridegroom would be gathered together, and the bridegroom would pledge himself to the bride and offer the bride a cup of wine, which signifies the fullness of this covenant that's being made.

And it's at this point in the service that the bride is fully empowered to reject the cup.

I mean, a whole lot of social confusion and hostility might result, but no one would question her right to do that.

She can refuse the bridegroom at this point by refusing the cup.

Or she can accept the cup.

And this covenant has been ratified between the bridegroom and the bride, and for all intents and purposes, they are covenanted to be married.

They're not going to live as husband and wife, they're going to spend the next year preparing for the wedding ceremony, where it will be fully realized, this marriage.

But they're betrothed to one another.

It's not breaking up like breaking up an engagement, right?

This is what Mary and Joseph were, right?

When Mary's pregnant with our Lord Jesus.

So you can imagine the scandal that results.

Even though this was a a holy thing that she conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, folks in the village get to talking, don't they?

Okay, so a covenant's been ratified, the cup has been offered and it's been received, and now they go off.

The bridegroom retreats and they start getting ready for this marriage ceremony, which takes about a year, and now at the marriage ceremony, once again the bridegroom offers another cup and speaks the covenant over that cup, so that again it is received by the bride, and that covenant right there is fully realized and ratified.

They are married.

We don't quite do that today, do we?

But it's a beautiful thought.

In fact, maybe with that in mind, we can start to make sense of what's going on in Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 26 is the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Right?

This is my body, this is my blood.

But there's this really curious verse, verse 28.

Did you notice that?

I tell you, Jesus says, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Is that Jesus saying, like, I think I'm going to lay off the wine for a couple thousand years?

I think that's a good idea.

What's he doing?

He's made a covenant.

He's betrothed himself to his bride.

He's spoken the covenant over the cup, and he has offered it to his beloved.

And his disciples, his beloved, accept.

Jesus has pledged himself to his bride, the church.

And now at his crucifixion, his ascension, he has gone away, as it were, to prepare for the full realization of this union between God and his people.

One Bible scholar named Claude Chavez writes in his book, The Bride of Christ, that the Last Supper was not only the Passover meal, but also the marriage feast of the bridegroom.

Essentially, the Passover itself was nuptial.

The foundation of the marriage between Yahweh and his people was the covenant between them.

The covenant was made and ratified by the Passover.

It is therefore no playing with words, but the sober truth to say that Jesus, if not enacting a marriage at the Last Supper, was solemnizing the marriage between himself and the church in this new covenant.

Jesus is betrothing himself, pledging himself to those that he.

So we go to Revelation 19.

We've seen the arc of Scripture is pointing us to the very end of history.

Are we surprised to see a wedding at the end of history now?

Are we surprised that it's union towards which everything has been going?

Revelation 19.

Babylon has been destroyed.

Babylon represents everything in opposition to God's good will for his world.

Babylon's being defeated.

The kingdom is being fully realized.

What we read about in Isaiah 25 is coming to pass, but more than a feast of victory that Isaiah 25 understands this feast to be.

It is a wedding.

It's a marriage feast.

It is the wedding at the end of the world and the beginning of the next.

Let's read Revelation 19 again here, verse 6.

I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God Almighty reigns.

The kingdom is come on earth as it is in heaven.

So let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

It was given her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.

And then the narrator says here, the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, Write this blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This is the wedding ceremony towards which all wedding ceremonies point.

Whether or not they realize it, wedding ceremonies point us to the very goal of history, to the very goal of the Christian life, this perfect sharing of loving union between us, God's people in Christ, and God in Christ.

This is where it's all been heading.

We see the Lamb.

This is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

We know this Lamb is Jesus.

We've met a slain Lamb in chapter 5 who is ultimately victorious.

We've heard John the Baptist declare Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We know that the Lamb, Jesus, is the bridegroom, and we know the bride to be the church, God's people.

It's identified in the next chapter that the heavenly Jerusalem, which represents all of God's people, descends out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.

And if we have any doubt, we can read what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5 about this mystery of marriage representing this wedding at the end of history.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Paul writes this in Ephesians 5, verse 25.

Ephesians 5:25

He commands husbands, love your wives.

Love them real good, do your best.

No, he says, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

And he goes on to say, Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

He's quoting the Genesis covenant of marriage.

And Paul says this this mystery is profound, you know, the mystery of marriage.

And I am saying that it refers to Christ and his church.

And he says, However, let each of you love his wife as himself.

So the mystery to which Paul is pointing is that marriage points beyond itself to the end of history.

That this love with which Christ loved the church is a complete self-sacrificing love, a complete self-giving love.

It is the love that costs him the cross, and he is glad to pay that as a down payment, as it were, for us his people.

So that by his resurrection, his ascension, his coming again, he can fully realize this perfect union, this perfect union in love between us and him.

Saint Bede writes that the marriage supper of the Lamb occurs when the church will be united with her Lord in the wedding chamber of the heavenly kingdom.

And what a glorious union that's going to be.

Not everyone is called to the vocation of marriage on this side of eternity.

That's by no means a lesser vocation, by the way.

But everyone is invited into this union.

Because this union is the purpose of the Christian life.

Eternity is about the realization of God's fullest covenant love for his beloved, his bride, his people, and the beginning of a perfect eternal union with him.

What does that say about God?

He's a romantic, isn't he?

He loves us.

He has given himself up for us.

He is calling us to himself.

And this, friends, this is what eternity is all about for us, his people, enjoying his love forever.

So what do we do with that?

I want to suggest that we taste and see that the Lord is good to his bride.

We've already quoted from Matthew chapter 26, the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Jesus tells us of the cup.

He speaks the covenant over the cup and offers it to his beloved.

What does he say?

He says, This is the blood of the covenant.

Oh, that's an interesting word.

That's a marriage word.

This is my blood of the covenant.

It's by this cup that we are physically, spiritually related to Jesus, as it were.

It is a spiritual reality to become one flesh, or as Paul would say, one body with Christ.

We enjoy perfect union by accepting this covenant, by taking it upon ourselves.

The church has understood this for a long, long time.

Augustine in the fourth century writes, every celebration of communion is a celebration of a marriage.

The church's nuptials are celebrated.

The king's son is about to marry a wife, and the king's son is himself a king, and the guests frequenting the marriage are themselves the bride.

That is Y'all, the bride.

For all the church is Christ's bride, of which the beginning and first fruits is the flesh of Christ.

There was the bride joined to the bridegroom in the flesh.

And again, Shavez writes that the Last Supper was like a Jewish wedding feast in this way.

He says, outwardly the ceremonies of the Last Supper suggest a marriage of those days.

The house was prepared for the reception of the bridegroom who had absented himself with his friends.

At a given signal, he and his party returned to find the room prepared for the wedding feast.

And the feast itself began with the prescribed hand washing and benediction.

Then the great wine cup was filled, and the principal personage, taking it and holding it, recited over it the prayer of bridal blessing.

Then the men seated themselves.

And after the supper, the bridegroom left the feast with the bride.

There is no lack of evidence, he says, that throughout his ministry our Lord was preparing the minds of his disciples for the marriage feast of the Eucharist, of the Lord's Supper, of Holy Communion.

When we come to this table, we come to get pointed to the great wedding feast to come.

We hear the words of Christ being spoken over the bread and the wine to tell us that he has covenanted himself to us as the perfect bridegroom who will not leave us or forsake us.

And the invitation is to come and not just be guests at this wedding, but to be united with him in perfect love forever and ever.

Amen.

So, friends, let's take up the invitation.

Let's come to the Lord's Supper.

Each time we come, we, the members of his body, his bride, are offered the cup.

We are reminded that he is covenanted with us.

We'll enjoy his perfect friendship, his fellowship forever.

The Christian life is indeed a pilgrimage into eternity.

And we end where we began with God's covenant love to us.

So come, friends, taste and see that the Lord is good.

We are almost home.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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