Come to the Table: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Isaiah 25:1-9; Revelation 19:1-10)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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

Let's talk about Holy Communion and the goal of history.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, you are a God who satisfies our souls as with rich food.

So what else can our mouths do but praise you?

Father, by your word and your Holy Spirit, would you impress your word upon us to catch us up in this heavenly hope and point us to yourself at the table.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So we come to the conclusion of our study.

These past few weeks, we've been looking at what Scripture has to say about holy communion.

What does it mean to take up the invitation to come to the Lord's table?

We saw in Acts chapter 2 that the earliest church, the disciples and the disciples of those disciples, devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and to the prayers.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And if you're like me and the breaking of the bread stands out to you, we want to ask why is that?

Why is it that the breaking of the bread was so important, that the Lord's Supper, that holy communion, was so important that it would be among those four essential things that the earliest church devoted themselves to?

Well, over the last couple of weeks, we've seen a few biblical reasons.

Why is it that the church would devote themselves to the breaking of the bread?

Why is it that we at Newsong would endeavor to devote ourselves to the breaking of the bread?

We've seen first and foremost that the Lord's table is the feast of deliverance.

Our first week we saw from Exodus 12 and Matthew 26 that the table points us back to God's saving promise and activity in history.

It's our deliverance through his substitution.

And when Jesus institutes holy communion, he does so in the context of the Passover.

But he re-centers the Passover, not on the lamb that was sacrificed on the eve of Israel's exodus from Egypt, but on himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world, who is sacrificed on the cross.

When we come to the table, we come to receive the feast of our deliverance through Jesus, our substitute.

We also come to the table to receive the bread of heaven.

Last Sunday we looked in Exodus 16 in John chapter 6, and we saw that the Lord's table points us presently to our participation, our koinaniah in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

John 6 · chapter mention

We see that Christ gives his very self to us to be our true food and our true drink on this our pilgrimage from the present age to the age to come.

This is for us the bread of heaven to sustain us on our journey.

This Sunday I want us to see a third thing.

I want us to see that the table doesn't just point us back to God's activity in history, doesn't just point us presently to Christ.

Certainly it does those things.

But it points us forward.

It points us forward to God's goal for all of history.

The triumph and celebration and the eternal union of God with his people celebrated around a table.

Past, present, and future.

All right here at the Lord's table with the Alpha and the Omega.

So here's what I'd like for us to do this morning, friends.

I'd like for us to start our journey in Isaiah 25, to see what's going on there, and bring it with us into Revelation 19, to catch a glimpse of where history is going, and then consider what that means for us presently on our Emmaus road.

Let's discover God's great goal for us as Christians, as a parish, for all of history, and what it means as we come to the table today.

So let's start in Isaiah 25.

I encourage you, if you've got your order of service or you've got your Bible, turn with me to Isaiah 25, 1 to 9.

What's going on in the book of Isaiah?

Well, Isaiah was a prophet.

He was entrusted with the word of God, and he lived in Jerusalem around the 8th century BC.

And he spoke to the leaders of Judah God's word, both of judgment, that God would answer rebellion against his covenant, but God will save Judah.

He will redeem them, he will redeem his people, and one day God will fulfill all his covenant promises.

Isaiah's message is a message of judgment, yes, but it's a judgment of hope as well.

Meant to lead Israel, all of God's people, into obedience and reliance upon him.

This is a message for everyone waiting for justice in an unjust time.

So chapters 24 and 27 form a unit within this message.

It's a tale of two cities, so to speak.

It talks about a lofty city, a proud city, a ruthless city that stands for everything, every kingdom, every power that stands in rebellion and opposition to God.

We caught a glimpse of that in Pharaoh just a few weeks ago.

And this city is destined for ruin.

Whereas there's a second city, a new Jerusalem, a heavenly Jerusalem, that represents God's kingdom.

That brings hope, that brings peace, that brings justice with it.

So in verses 1 to 5, we catch a glimpse of the triumph of God.

God completes his plan for history as promised.

We see two things about God's triumph.

One, human tyranny has completely overthrown by God.

Verse 2, you, the Lord, Isaiah says, have made the city, this ruthless, oppositional city, a heap, the fortified city a ruin.

The foreigner's palace is a city no more.

It will never be rebuilt.

Ruthless nations and evil will be completely answered by God's true justice.

And the poor and the needy, we see in verse 4, will be finally cared for.

That's the first thing it means, but the second thing the triumph of God means is this it's party time.

Did you catch that?

Verse 1.

I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and true.

This is prophecies be given in the context of celebration.

The Lord's coming and his kingdom are worth celebrating because they answer the injustice of our time.

So what are we seeing here in Isaiah 25?

We're seeing the end of God's story.

We're seeing the goal for all of history as he works it out by his sovereign purpose and will.

We're seeing the passing of this present age of injustice and darkness and sin give way to a greater age to come, an age where God dwells with his people.

And the purpose of giving Isaiah this vision of the end of history is this.

Well, let me give you an illustration here.

So I've been reading Lord of the Rings recently.

I've never read Lord of the Rings cover to cover, and I'm very excited to do so.

I've seen the movies.

I grew up as a bit of a Lord of the Rings nerd.

I might be a nerd if you haven't clued in yet, if my Star Wars and Batman references haven't clued you in.

But um but the remarkable thing about reading Lord of the Rings, what strikes me, I've seen the movies, I haven't read the books cover to cover, like I say, but what strikes me about reading the books is Tolkien has this way of drawing you into the sheer scale and stakes of everything in a way that the movies, I'm not sure, conveys.

It is remarkable.

If you've known Lord of the Rings, you know that's this epic tale of good versus evil.

And the thing that the books do so well is convey the sheer seemingly unlimited power of the powers of darkness.

Every time the heroes kind of mount their defenses and rally together and barely push, you know, hold the line and push evil back, it seems that the evil forces have this way of regathering and coming back even stronger, even harder than before.

And it seems to happen again and again.

And as a reader, I'm going, this seems utterly hopeless.

They're completely outnumbered.

Evil is multiplying.

But the thing is, I know the end of the story.

I know that this is a happy ending.

I know that this is a hopeful ending.

And so when I come to read these books, even in the most helpless moments, like the siege of Helm's Deep or Gondor, those things are meaningful to you.

That's great.

Let's talk after service.

But even in the most hopeless of moments, I know that there's hope.

Because we're going to a good ending.

This is the reason God gives this vision to Isaiah.

No matter how hopeless things seem, no matter how unjust things seem, history is heading towards its predetermined goal.

Because I am the Lord, and I have spoken.

Knowing the end of the story means bringing it with us through the story as it works out.

And at the center of this celebration, this goal for all of history, we see a feast.

On this mountain, verse 6, the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

So we've seen this mountain before.

If you've been reading, if you've read Isaiah, you know from chapter 2, this mountain locates us in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the city on which God's covenant promises to his people center.

But it's not just the Jewish people who occupy Jerusalem that we see here.

Notice all people are in attendance.

And again in verse 7, all people, or all nations, all faces, all the earth, in verse 8.

This is the fulfillment of God's covenant promise to Abraham, or Abram at the time, all the way at the beginning of the story of God's covenant people, Israel.

Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 12, God promises Abraham that I will make of you a great nation.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

At the end of history, this covenant promise will hold.

Count on it.

And why are they feasting?

Well, having silenced the partying of the ruthless city in chapter 24, we now see God provide an even greater, even more abundant, even more generous provision to his people.

This is the end of their suffering.

And he's invited this multinational people to his table of blessing.

Isaiah tells us more about this table in chapter 55.

Come is the invitation.

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy, and eat.

Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen is the imperative.

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Thus says the Lord.

God is up to more than just providing a really, really good meal here.

Notice that there's a number of things that God will do in the context of this feast at the end of history.

Verse 7: God will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is over all the peoples, the veil that is spread over all the nations.

He will swallow up death forever.

See, in the context of this feast, death and the power of death is undone.

Formerly death has been the great swallower.

Isaiah said in chapter 5 that Sheol, the place of the dead, has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure.

Death has swallowed rich and poor, young and old, woman and man alike, since our first parents swallowed the forbidden fruit in the garden, and they themselves were swallowed by the power of sin and death.

Such is the condition of the human race in Adam.

And Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 that sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

We are swallowed saints, apart from grace.

But at this feast, the Lord will swallow up death forever.

He will swallow the great swallower.

Verse 8, the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces.

See, at this feast, we see grieving, mourning, is destroyed.

It reminds me of what Samuise Gamji says to Gandalf at the end of The Lord of the Rings.

He asks this question: Is everything sad going to come untrue?

The powers of darkness have been broken.

Is everything sad going to come untrue?

And for us, God's word says this.

Yes.

The reproach of the people he will take away from all the earth.

No more will God's peoples face shame or condemnation.

His people will never be left thinking that they've been abandoned.

What is Isaiah witnessing here?

He's seeing the goal of history.

He's seeing the end of the story of salvation.

And it's just the beginning of the age to come.

God is moving all of history to its happy end for his people.

Evil has been conclusively answered.

Death has been swallowed.

His people have been redeemed.

And they are invited, assembled, together at a table for a bountiful and generous feast at which the Lord is their host.

Friends, this is our heavenly hope.

But is this how we picture heaven?

I confess my imagination for heaven is more informed by Philadelphia cream cheese commercials than it is by scripture.

Floating around with fluffy wings and strumming harps, and I don't play the harp.

That wouldn't be a nice sound for anyone involved.

Friends, sometimes we need to let God's word shape our imagination more than Philadelphia cream cheese commercials.

We need to let God's word point us towards our true heavenly hope.

And that's being assembled at a table, a table of triumph, a table of celebration, a table where God is our host and he is pleased to spread a feast for us.

This is the goal of our Christian pilgrimage: sharing a meal with our Lord.

Theologian Michael Horton says this our heavenly hope is not only of saved souls, but of saved creation.

Just as Jesus ate and drank after his resurrection, there will be eating and drinking in the new creation, although this time at the consummated marriage supper of the Lamb, with Jesus drinking wine with us.

This is a very real hope, our physical hope.

And it brings us to Revelation 19.

What's going on here?

John, probably John the Apostle, composes this letter.

It's meant to be a circular letter that goes around to churches in Asia Minor, encouraging them to stand fast, to rely upon God's grace under persecution, to persevere.

And the simple message of Revelation is this, because there's a lot of complicated messages about Revelation.

It makes revelation seem more complicated, I wonder, than what it is.

All the flow charts, and if you've seen those, you know what I'm talking about.

The simple message of Revelation is this: Jesus wins.

Amen.

But he wins in a surprising way.

He doesn't.

Jesus is the slame lamb who saves his people by dying for them.

So John here in Revelation 19 sees the same scene as Isaiah.

In verses 1 to 5, he sees that human tyranny is overthrown, that the great prostitute has been judged, and that's just an image for those who have been seduced by power into rebellion and opposition to God and to his people.

And because human tyranny is overthrown, it's party time.

There's three hallelujahs here, and the elders sing, Praise our God, all you servants, you who fear him, small and great.

See, in the midst of this celebration, John sees an abundant and generous feast, the feast that Isaiah saw.

But it's as though he's shown the same feast with more detail or from a different angle.

He sees that this is more than just a victory feast, more than just a coronation feast.

This is a wedding banquet.

Verses 6 to 9, John writes, 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 supper of the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

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

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

This is a feast that with at which death is swallowed up.

It is a feast where we celebrate a wedding.

But the question is, who's getting married?

Well, we know from verse 7 that the lamb is getting married.

This is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And we know from reading Revelation up to this point that the Lamb is Jesus.

He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world from John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

He is the Lamb who has slain, the Lamb who has secured the victory of his people.

At this wedding banquet, Jesus is the bridegroom.

So who's the bride?

Again, reading Revelation up to this point makes it clear: the bride is his people, the church.

This isn't a weird feature of Revelation, but it's consistent with this revelation we receive throughout Scripture.

In the Old Testament and in the new, God so often expresses his heart for his people with the image of a husband for a wife.

Paul says to the Corinthian church, I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

See, it's this purity here in 2 Corinthians and in Revelation that stands in contrast to the prostitute in Revelation 19.

It's not meant to shame those who've committed sexual sin, it's meant to be an illustration of the wholehearted devotion and fidelity that God's people are called to enjoy with Christ.

And further, on his teaching in marriage in Ephesians chapter 5, Paul points to the meaning of marriage.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Paul points out that the meaning of marriage points us directly to the union of Christ and his church.

This mystery of marriage, Paul writes, is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

So maybe we should pause here.

Is it a strange thing to consider that we'll be married to Christ?

I remember when I first heard this passage being preached on, I couldn't have been older than 12 years old or so, and I was weirded out.

I thought this is a strange thing to consider that in a real way I'll be married to Christ.

I'll be among his people married to Christ.

I sort of thought, I mean, he's a great guy, and I love him.

I think I love him.

Um I kind of wish he made his intentions a little clearer early on or something.

And that probably says more about me than anything else.

What are we talking about when we talk about being married to Christ, this marriage supper of the Lamb?

Well, I want to suggest here what we're talking about is a union, a glorious union, an eternal union.

And what else is marriage but a covenant union?

And here at the end of history.

We see the union to end all unions, or perhaps more accurately, we see the greatest union of Christ with his people, the church, to which this great union of marriage points.

So if you've ever wondered why Christians hold marriage in such high regard, here it is.

Marriage is the gift that God has given us not to be an end in itself, but to be a signpost that points beyond itself to a greater reality to come, the greatest union to come at the end of history.

Therefore, the fidelity and trust and loyalty and the mutual compassion and partnership and the unity and distinction matter in Christian marriage because they point forward to Christ's commitment to his church.

And this is true whether you're married or single.

If we are in Christ, we share this foundational and greatest union with our Savior.

We are members of his church and we are betrothed to our bridegroom.

As much as I love my wife Rachel, and I love my wife Rachel, we share a union that is greater than just our marriage.

We are both of us united to Christ by faith.

Marriage is just that signpost that points beyond ourselves, points both of us and those around us we trust, to that greater union to come.

See, God in Christ is moving all of history to this happy end for his people, where evil has been conclusively answered, death has been swallowed, his people are redeemed, they're seated together at a table for this wedding feast at which the Lamb, Jesus, is our bridegroom, and he's our host, and we are called blessed because we are invited to be seated at this marriage supper and united to Christ for all eternity.

So where does this leave us?

Here's where I want us to hang our hats this morning.

We're not there yet, are we?

While death's power and sin's power is broken by the cross, we still live in the ruthless city.

We still live in the kingdom of darkness where the people are seduced by power and oppose God and his people.

And it's important to acknowledge at this point the biblical tension of the already and not yet.

Christ has defeated the kingdom of darkness and called us his own and united us to himself by his Holy Spirit.

But we wait for his kingdom to be fully realized here on earth as it is in heaven, for our unity in him to be made fully manifest, and we wait to enjoy the everlasting blessings of life in him.

Even as we are made new in Christ, the old Adam of sin and death is still kicking at the goats.

So where does this leave us?

We're pilgrims, saints.

We're a people journeying through the wilderness, as it were, from the present age to the age to come, where we'll be received as a bride and celebrated at the great wedding banquet to come.

For now we travel.

And God in Christ spreads for us, as it were, a table in the wilderness.

And this brings us, like two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the Lord's table.

It's Easter Sunday afternoon, and these two disciples are headed home to Emmaus after witnessing the crucifixion.

Jesus comes to them, but miraculously they don't recognize it's Jesus.

Maybe he's easy to miss along the road if our hearts aren't ready to receive him.

So Jesus asks, What are you talking about?

And one of the disciples, Cleopus, answers, Seriously?

You've not heard the news.

Jesus has been crucified.

And verse 21, we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

See, we bet our lives on this guy.

We thought that he was going to be God's chosen Messiah.

And whether directly or indirectly, these disciples had hoped that Jesus would be the one to usher in this Isaiah 25 feast at the end of history.

He would be the one to bring us from the age that is to the age to come, the one who would invite us to that feast.

But no, he's dead.

So we're packing it up, we're feeling pretty depressed, and we're re-evaluating some of our life decisions, and we're heading home because there's no more hope in Jesus.

This is where Jesus, I think playfully in verse 25, calls them foolish ones.

Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Wouldn't you love to be at that Bible study?

Where Jesus, the living word of God, opens up to us God's very word.

Such is the reason we open the scriptures every Sunday, why pastors preach sermons, to show forth Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for us as our hope and our Savior.

But Jesus does more than just open up the scriptures with them, he takes them to the table.

They knew drew near to the village that they were going.

It's a waypoint along the journey.

Jesus acts as if he's going further, but they urge him to stay with us.

So he sits down at the table with them, and verse 30, he took bread and blessed it, and broke it and gave it to them.

And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.

He vanishes from their sight, and they say, Do not our hearts burn within us, while he talked to us on the road, and while he opened to us the scriptures.

Returning to Jerusalem, they say, they they tell what had happened on the road, how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Here's the bottom line here, saints.

Jesus reveals himself to us, crucified and raised, victorious over sin and death, calling and uniting his people to himself through these ordinary means of word and sacrament, which he gives to his church as a gift.

So here we are, saints, pilgrims journeying from this present age into the age to come, this present age brought about by our parents' illicit feast in a garden, into a greater feast, a feast at which death itself will be swallowed, a feast at which we will celebrate our eternal union with God in Christ as his well-lov the church.

Already, not yet.

Perhaps we come feeling defeated and depressed.

Perhaps we're inclined to lose hope in Jesus.

But we come and we're invited to hear the good news of God's salvation through his word.

And we are invited to this foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come, a feast which assures us that we too are blessed, for we are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

In this already not yet pilgrimage, by faith, we offer to Jesus the same invitation that these two disciples do.

It's an invitation that Jesus does not begrudge.

Stay with us.

This table reminds us that God is moving us as Christians, as a parish, all of history towards the happy end in Christ.

That we who are his own, we who are his well-loved bride, will share in table fellowship with him forever.

So let's not lose sight of the wonder of what this table means.

It is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet we share with our bridegroom, and it's a taste of the everlasting celebration to come, made possible only by the cross and resurrection of our Lord.

So, saints, come to the table by faith.

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

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow Him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is one hundred percent funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit Newsongportperry.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.