Gooding, David: 9 - The Lamb and His Bride

Now, as we have already observed, that movement five of the book of the Revelation comes to its end by the announcement that the marriage supper of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready. And as we have seen, those remarks contrast so vividly the la- wife and bride of the Lamb who has made herself ready for her bridegroom. They contrast her vividly with those false women, Babylon the Great, the mystery, and Babylon the meretricious economic society. When the Lamb's wife has made herself ready, then the book of the Revelation begins its last and tremendous movement of thought. For we read in chapter nineteen and verse eleven that the heaven is open and the Son of God appears. So that in our final study this evening, we shall be concentrating on that last movement in the book of the Revelation. It is a description of what technically is called the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, his public coming in all the blaze of the glory of his Father and of his holy angels. When he comes to set up his kingdom, when he comes to put down evil, when he shall smash the power of the beast and the false prophet and deliver them summarily to the lake of fire for eternity. When he shall bind the serpent and cast him into the abyss for a thousand years, that he shall re- deceive the nations no more until the thousand years be fulfilled. When he shall set up his kingdom upon earth and reign in righteousness and justice and rule the nations with a rod of iron, and reign until the last enemy has been put down. And when that is done, our little planet as we know it now will be transformed, if not destroyed. Its place taken by the new heavens and the new earth. And our blessed Lord, according to one Corinthians fifteen, shall hand up the kingdom to God and the Father, that God might be all in all. Then shall be days of unprecedented joy, sorrow, and sin be banned from God's universe forever. It is no wonder that true Christians, when they read of these things in Holy Writ and hear the affirmations of the Lord Jesus, surely I come quickly, raise their hearts to him and cry unitedly as the ancient church cried, Maranah fa! O Lord, our Lord, come! For only in his coming have we hope, not only for ourselves, but for our sorry world. But you will perceive the connection, will you not, between the end of movement five and the beginning of movement six. The Lamb's wife has made herself ready, we are told. The marriage supper of the Lamb is come. So what we shall do now is to read just a few verses that will already prime our thinking and introduce us to movement six, and on that we shall have to concentrate. But there are one or two matters to be cleared up to answer more fully the question, how shall we as members of the bride of Christ make ourselves ready for his public coming? So let's do some reading just now and read from chapter nineteen how the fast last and final movement begins. Revelation six and verse eleven: And I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse and he that sat thereon, called faithful and true, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. Verse thirteen: and he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood, and his name is called the Word of God. Verse fifteen: and out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations. Verse twenty: and the beast was taken with him, and with him the false prophet that wrought the signs in his sight, wherewith he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. And they twain were cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone. Chapter uh twenty and verse one. and I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more. Verse ten. and the devil that deceived them was, after his final revolt, that is, cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet. Chapter twenty one. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first earth are pa- heaven and the first earth are passed away, and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. Verse five: And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new, and he saith right, for these words are faithful and true. Chapter twenty two. And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. Verse three. and there shall be no curse anymore, and the throne of God and the Lamb shall be therein, and his servants shall do him service. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night no more, and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. And he said unto me, these words are faithful and true. So now presently we are to think together of that majestic event when the Son of God shall come in all his glory, glory, the appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So that we will be ready for that appearing. We first of all stay a little while longer with these expressions that the marriage supper of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. You say, how would she make herself ready? I, we might be tempted, mightn't we, to answer in the words of an earlier chapter, the words indeed with which movement two in this book, uh, comes to its climax. For there we saw people clothed in white linen, pure and white, and they had made themselves ready to stand before the throne of God, by their garments being washed in the blood of the Lamb. You say to me tonight, Mr. Preacher, this is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Whatever company of the redeemed I'm in, you explain to me, I shall stand before the throne on the same ground as that great multitude, my robes washed in the blood of the Lamb. I stand with you, friend. I too sing with all my heart. This is all my hope and plea, nothing but the blood of Jesus. But then close attention to God's holy word would show us that when we come to the end of movement five, to the response of the great multitude, and they explain to us how the Lamb's wife has made herself ready, they do not say that she has washed her robes in the blood of the Lamb, do they? Of course, it is true. For the forgiveness of her sins, for redemption, for acceptance with God, she knows only the blood of the Lamb of God. But here is something more. You know, when wives go, when brides go to their wedding, you've remarked how stupendously beautiful they look, don't they? And they not only have their basic robe, or I don't think they call it a robe. I'm lost for words as I try to remember what the whole setup is, you'll see. Truso or something, but I'm not quite sure which part applies to what. But there they've got it, and on top they've got veils and and uh japonica hats or whatever. You know all the things they have. In order, uh, not just to appear just in a plain dress, but all beautiful and gloriously adorned and richly decorated, made up for the occasion. Of course, there's a little bit show for the, for the photographs, but primarily made up to satisfy the bridegroom. So shall it be when the Lord comes. And his people have made themselves ready, accepted through the blood of Christ. Yes, but they have toiled, according to this passage, to live a life of practical righteousness, and with busy fingers they have done those good works that God foreprepared that we should walk in them. Saved by grace indeed, but saved by God that we should do the good works that he aforeprepared that we walk in them. And the bride of Christ, with busy fingers and skillful art, has weaved herself pure linen garments made of the righteous acts of the saints, getting ready for the Lord to come, so that when she meets him, she may have a life of practical deeds to show him that she is wrought out of love and devotion to the one she loves best of all. His wife hath made herself ready, and it was granted to her to be arrayed in pure linen, clean and white, for the pure linen this time are the righteous acts of the saints. So that for a moment I ought to be looking to my trousseau too, didn't I? Whether my acts as a believer are righteous and true. As we do so, we cannot help thinking of that woman Babylon again. We wouldn't like to be like her, would we? Love. Love, compromise, beauty, perverted. You'll see if in the Antichrist you have the devil's perversion of the male, a perversion of power. For men like to feel powerful, don't they? And Satan gets at man through his love of power. When it comes to Babylon, we have Satan's perversion of the female, the perversion of beauty, selling her favors, disloyal to God, disloyal to the Lord Jesus, seeking to control godless, atheistic political system of the day. Does it have any voice for us? I speak first to the Christian business- businessmen present. We saw how Babylon of old became the cage of all kinds of idolatry, my dear good businessmen, let me talk to you straight. It was a difficulty that troubled the ancient Christian churches, wasn't it? Whether if, for instance, they were goldsmiths, they should attend the dinner parties in the Goldsmiths Union. Why shouldn't they? Well, because if they went to the Goldsmiths Union of goldsmiths, to the dinner parties, at the corner would stand an idol. The food on the dinner table would be offered to the idol in a religious ceremony, and then the people would eat it. Present would be a lot of women, but they wouldn't be the businessmen's wives, not so. There'd be a lot of women nonetheless, provided by the goldsmiths union for the entertainment of the gentlemen. And the question arose, should businessmen go, Christian businessmen go, and be involved both in, in idolatry and in fornication? If they didn't go, they stood to suffer considerable financial loss. In one church in the Revelation, the name of it was Thyatira, there was a somebody there who taught that it was perfectly all right for Christians to go and to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. And that false teacher brought on his or her head the solemn denunciation of the Son of God. You cannot play fast and loose with your affection and loyalty to the Lord Jesus. Business life makes a lot of demands of Christian men, doesn't it? My own bank manager, don't run away with the idea I'd much in his coffers, but he's a very kindly man nonetheless, for he's a Christian man. At one stage he came to me, David, he said, I've been having a lot of trouble. The principals of the bank have been trying to force me to join the Freemasons. Well, why wouldn't he? Because, as the fore said, it may be very good for business, but their ceremonies are as idolatrous as they could be from start to finish. Old pagan, hoary idolatry. But his principal said, you must join it because you're losing us customers in the bank. He had to weigh, did my friend, loyalty to the Lord Jesus against promotion in his work. Here the Apostle Paul, you cannot, says he to the Corinthians, you cannot eat of the table of demons and of the table of the Lord. What do you think? Will you behave like Moab in the wilderness and go off and be joined to Baal Peor and worship other gods? God won't have it, for God is a jealous God. Like any lover, he is jealous for the affection of his bride, and he will not put up with a true believer member of the bride of Christ playing fast and loose with her Lord and compromising with idolatry. We provoke the Lord to jealousy. Are we stronger than he? Saint Paul recurs to the theme, does he not, in two Corinthians chapter 11, but with a variation upon it. He says, you see, to the Corinthian believers, I'm jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, even to Jesus Christ, and I'm dreadfully afeard, says he, lest that old serpent, that crafty old serpent who beguiled Eve, shall corrupt your thoughts from absolute loyalty to the Lord Jesus. Here is not a question so much of religious unfaithfulness as it is a question of intellectual unfaithfulness, lest he corrupt your thoughts. I talk to my younger brethren and sisters. I was once young. I know what it is to live in a world where intellectual battles are everything. Where the challenge is to stand as a believer, intellectually loyal to God and his holy word. I know the terrible temptation to sing hymns in praise of our Lord and of his deity in church, and then in academic circles to be tempted to be less than loyal to the inspiration of his word, to his deity, to his sinless manhood. Ah, but you see, we cannot play fast and loose, can we? And if as the bride of Christ we would make ourselves ready, then unlike that old whore Babylon, we must be religiously, then intellectually loyal to the Savior, whom we love. Now, there are some theologians that tell us that the Babylon depicted in Revelation seventeen is the same as the Babylon depicted in chapter eighteen. so I shall not argue it with you, except to say I think they're different. Never mind. Each man is entitled to his opinion, isn't he? But this I noticed that when we come to the Babylon depicted in the book of the Revelation A D, she is described in very striking terms, such that if you were to go back to the Old Testament and say, where in the Old Testament would you find a prophecy like this? You would find it more with God's description of the Prince of Tyre than you would discover it in God's description of the king of Babylon. All those long lists of commercial activities, those beautiful products, those delightful manufactured goods, those artistic and aesthetic things that are predicated of Babylon in Revelation eighteen are found in the prophecy of Ezekiel, predicated of the king of Tyre. And not any wonder about that either, is it? Because, as you know from your knowledge of history, the, the Phoenicians based on Tyre and Sidon founded a great empire, but it was an empire built not so much on politics, but on trade. The Phoenicians were the great traders of the ancient world. There they went off in their ships with their beautiful amphoras and latest tea sets, of course, all painted up beautiful, you see. And they persuaded the housewives in Greece and North Africa and wherever they went, and even some in Britain, though they hadn't got much money in Britain in those days. They persuaded them that the old mugs that they used to use were no good. You must have a new set of mugs, all painted in the Phoenician latest slipware, earthenware, you see. They were delightful. Yeah. You say, what's wrong with that? Nothing. It was a distinct improvement when they came to Britain, I assure you. Well, then you say, if that were, if they did the nation such a good service in those ancient days by raising the standard of living, what's wrong with that, any more than the merchants do today when they raise the standard of living by giving us some dishwashers and, uh, clothes washers and, uh, microwaves and, uh, electric shavers and, uh, central heating and all those other lovely things that they persuade us that we need, though our grandfathers didn't. And I tell you, I'm grateful for them, for my Japanese hi-fi and the car that goes and everything else. Why not? And yet, when you come to read the Old Testament description of Tyre, you discover that in God's eyes there was something very seriously wrong with Tyre. His king is described in such terms as has made many people think of the devil himself. The very acme of beauty, as the devil once was. The covering cherub that attended on the very throne of God in his consummate glory and beauty. Ah, but beauty too can get perverted and misused. And that great and grand beautiful cherub, instead of letting his beauty charm the very heart of God and serve God, it turned in upon itself, and he sought his own will to live for self. That's beauty gone wrong. There's nothing wrong in modern civilization that I know, but I do see a danger in it. That beautiful s- household suite, that lovely car, sir, that you have, delightful, aren't they? I wish I had one like you. But in its beauty, there lurks still that danger peculiar to beauty that'll take your heart's affection away from the Lord. When men were pure, uh, when men, when men were poor, so I've been told here up in County Durham, trying to think on spiritual things. Then came better prosperity, more goods. Oh, how the people deserve them. Why shouldn't they have it? Ah, but not everybody resisted the danger, and for some people, the sheer beauty of the goods took their heart from God and from spiritual things. A multitudinous men and women today in our British Isles, so full of goods, have no time for God. Let me remind you, more people will be in hell, seduced there by beautiful things, than will be in hell brought there by vicious crime. How's it going with us as believers? His wife hath made herself ready. Have we? Are we? Are we thanking God for all the beautiful things that he gives us, but by God's grace seeking to give them, keep them in their place, so that the gifts God gives us lead our hearts' affections nearer the Lord. Or is it true of us that sometimes our very beautiful things lead us away from the Lord? Once we had no mini. What can you do when you haven't got a mini minor? Well, you could go to the prayer meeting, couldn't you? And we got a mini. If you've got a mini, you've got to use it. If then Tuesday night's the only night you've got, and that happens to be prayer meeting night. So what do you do? Use the mini and don't come to the prayer meeting. But there's nothing wrong with the mini. No, and one day, if you're a believer, God will give you a whole galaxy or two to look after. But my dear good friend, if a mini would keep you from the prayer meeting here, what would a galaxy do up there? You'd never turn up to the, uh, the eternal praise sessions. And we've got to get ready for handling immense glory, the weight of glory. God isn't going to let us there until it's safe. Yes, the very glory of heaven took our heart from the Savior, like it did Satan's. Once we didn't have much education. So we read the Bible. And then we got a lot of good education. And we got good jobs. We got so busy in our jobs, we didn't get much time to read the Bible. Something's gone wrong there too, isn't it? And I shall not need to expatiate on it further. But the Lord is coming. And her bride is to make herself ready. And show by her behavior now that she's religiously loyal to Christ. And intellectually loyal to Christ. And in the commercial things of life and the material things of life, loyal to the Lord Jesus and allowing nothing to come between our heart and its affections and the blessed Lord. For the Lord is coming. Oh, sing the glad word. What should it be like when he comes? With that we pass over to the final great movement of the book. As now the heaven opens, and the Son of God comes forth, riding his horse, faithful and true. On him the name written, the Word of God. From his open mouth a sword moves. He going to slay the wicked with the breath of his nostril. As we think of his triumph over the beast, his imprisonment of the devil, his m- thousand-year reign, and the very final judgment that he will conduct, for he will be the final judge. Impressed on it all is the many times repeated remark, he is faithful and true. He shall put down all deceit. He shall be the end of every lie. When he comes, men at last will see the truth as the truth is, and face reality. That enormous lie that will have been perpetrated on earth by the beast and his government, that there is no God out there. The enormous lie perpetrated by theologians like Don Cupid of Cambridge, telling the world in the name of the church, there is no God out there. The enormous lie put about by theologians that God cannot intervene in our world. They can neither believe the incarnation of Christ, they can't believe his second coming, because, as they say, you can't believe in a God that would intervene in our world. That lie shall be nailed. The simple fact that the Son of God is coming again, and every eye shall see him. It shall be the end of the lie and the end of deceit. So if he's going to do it one day, why doesn't he hurry up and do it now? My friend, because if he did it now, some people would be very embarrassed, wouldn't they? To say the least. Paul, in warning his fellow believers to be faithful and to preach the word of God in all its truth, reminds them of the day when the great almighty potentate, God himself, shall stage the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. When that happens, whose side shall we be on? Let me tell you a story. Comes from the Old Testament. It's a favorite of mine. It comes from the days when King David was old, very old, and the once lusty warrior was now a feeble old man. They got him in bed, he couldn't keep warm anyhow. They used all sorts of funny kinds of water bottle, but still to keep him warm, but he was dying fast. Now, King David had a number of sons. He had determined that King, his son Solomon should be king after him. But one of his other sons, called Adonijah, decided that now was the opportunity for him to seize the government. So he got his cronies together and formed his political party, called them all to a convention over the other side of the brook Kedron, and they held a tremendous celebration saying that Adonijah is king. And then Solomon's mother heard of it. And she went in to see King David, and there he was in his bed with his nose over the covers, all shriveled and about to die. And she said, Your Majesty, and he said, what is it? And he said, is it your will that Adonijah be king? What did you say, he said? Do you want Adonijah to be king? He sat up in bed. Adonijah, of course not. Solomon is to be king. She said, I thought so. Well, Adonijah's gone and had himself proclaimed king. He said, I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll get out my royal mule, and you'll put Solomon on it, and you'll get the high priest and the trumpets, and you'll make a procession down the street, and you'll blow the trumpets, and you shall cry, long live King Solomon. So that's what they did. They got the mule, they put, uh, Solomon on it, they got the priest, they blew the trumpet, and marching down the streets of Jerusalem, they came crying, Long live King Solomon! David was staging the appearance of the true king, you see. Well, then there was old Adonijah across the valley with his cronies at their party, you see, and they were merrily drinking his health when they heard this noise, and they stopped. Ha, what's that? And faintly, growing louder, came the noise, King Solomon is king! And it started to turn white. And they put down their glasses and they said, excuse us, Adonijah, we we just remembered, uh, uh, we've got an appointment, and uh, they tried to swing off. Because it was embarrassing to be found on the wrong side, wasn't it? When the true king came. And the king is coming. If he came tonight, whose side would we be on? What would you do if, when the truth is revealed, you were found to be on the other side, obeying the lie? Oh, what lovely things shall happen when the Lord come. I wish I had all the time there was to go through now the program that God has laid down in his word, the great events that will follow the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ in power and great glory. We must, alas, skip over them all to come to the great and final thing, the coming in glory of the bride of the Lamb. Now, just as when the Lord is depicted as coming, he is called the faithful and true. So when God's Holy Spirit begins to describe the wife of the Lamb, he says twice over, these sayings are faithful and true. I suspect all of us from time to time have suffered the distasteful shock of having gone to a shop and bought something thinking it was leather and found out it was plastic. Bought a piece of furniture that we thought was solid wood, only to find it wasn't solid wood at all, but papier-mache or something. Well, one can learn to live with it. Sometimes imitations like that that aren't the genuine thing serve my purpose well, and they serve my pocket even better. Unfortunate are the people who see what they think is love and find out it isn't the genuine thing. Aren't they? Unfortunate the people that fi- that go to religion thinking it's the way of God and find it in the end isn't the genuine thing. So that when at last the bride of the Lamb is manifested, it is not surprising to hear God's spirit say time and then time again, in his glorious descriptions of those magnificent wonders, these are the true and faithful sayings of God. Every pearl in that eternal city will be genuine, through and through. It will be the real thing. Ah, what a city it shall be. The love of the Savior for his people. Ah, the real thing. The love of his people for the Savior, the real thing. Fellowship of the people of God for all eternity, the real thing. Twice over does the inspiring spirit tell us that that city was like to pure gold and pure glass. Nothing substandard in the gold, no impurity in the glass, the real thing. That great and glorious city that is the Lamb's wife is said to come down from heaven, heaven the glory of God. Ah, what a day it shall be when God's purpose of redemption are fulfilled, and every believer finally is transformed into the very image of the Lord. Now the process is not yet complete, is it? We beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being changed little by little. Courage, my brother, my sister, one day it shall be done, and when you see him, you shall be like him, for you shall see him as he is. That transforming vision of the Savior shall complete our transformation. We shall be eternally like him. Our glorious purity will be guarded, of course, by a wall great and high, having solid foundations and effective gates. On the foundations of the names of the apostles of the Lamb, for the foundation of that great city's holiness and glory shall, of course, be the redemption that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I ask if we all tonight are built on that foundation. Like Abram looking for the city that hath the foundations, the redemption that is in Christ, applied to our hearts by faith in God, by justification, by faith, as Abram was justified, and we are built on that foundation. Not only so, for God's people shall have to be gloriously like him, built on the foundation that will make eternal security possible, but also they must reign with Christ. And so we find there are gates in that city, not only where people come in and out, but where the government of the city and the administration is located. And on those gates, the names of the tribe of, uh, of the sons of Jacob. And that is an interesting thing, for it takes us back to the Old Testament, to where the children of Jacob got their names from, that shall adorn that eternal city forever. And the Bible tells us they got their names this way, that their mothers, in the day-to-day life with Jacob in his tents, in the concerns of the home, in the birth of their children, in the experiences of life's frustrations and joys, they took these matters to God and made it a matter of prayer, and God heard their prayer, and these experiences of God in the day-to-day things of life were encapsulated in the names they gave their children, and the names are going on the gate of the eternal city forever. Of course they are. For they who are members of that city shall reign with Christ, and like Jacob's wives are being prepared by the disciplines of life and the experience of God in the affairs of life, being prepared to reign with the blessed Lord when he comes. Once more, the inspired spirit tells us it's all genuine. Because you see the people's faith, be it for salvation or their faith in daily living or their faith in re- uh, in effecting their responsibilities for the Lord. It's been like gold, as Peter put it, originally mixed up with a certain amount of dross. But in the course of life, refined and refined and refined again to when the Lord appears, that faith perfect without one speck of dross shall be found to praise and honor and glory eternally. These are the true and faithful sayings of God. Oh, thank God that the Spirit adds that in that day, into that city there shall never enter anything that defiles or makes a lie. Nothing that is not genuine. That's a vision of glory before us. Then we ought to exhort ourselves with two exhortations, and the first is this. Am I a genuine believer? He who says he knows God and walks in darkness, says John, is a liar. If we try to tell ourselves we have not sinned and we have no sin, well, says John, you are liars. Therefore, let me ask myself, am I a genuine believer? Not sinless yet, but saved by grace and walking in the light of God's word and pres- presence, confessing my sin and claiming his hi- his promise to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Or am I not a genuine believer, but simply religious? There shall not enter that city anything that isn't a hundred percent genuine. And secondly, I must ask myself this. The Bible says that if we have this hope, seeing the Lord when he comes, forming part of his bride, that we're going to be like him when he comes again, well, then we shall be trying to be like him now, and we shall purify ourselves even as he is pure. Let us ask ourselves, profess the Christian hope to be looking for the coming of the Lord. We say we want to be like him then. Then are we, by God's grace, now purifying ourselves and seeking to be conformed to what Christ was when he came first of all to our planet. God help us to ask the questions satisfactorily, and to be- and to him be all the glory as now we go our ways.