Fot - the Wedding Feast

I really appreciate having a microphone. It was going to be a long sermon. I really appreciate the work that the choir does and those who are involved in special music. It adds so much to the service. I really do appreciate the people who work on sound. They don't get much recognition unless something bad happens. Then everybody knows the sound people. They do a yeoman's job and sure appreciate the work that they do. My wife and I were in the Poconos with a feast 25 years ago. It's been a long time. I remember coming here back in the late 60s and early 70s. Back last night, my dad and I were talking about when he would drive here from western Pennsylvania up to Mount Poconos to help build that feast site.

He was telling a story about how they were collecting rocks out of the parking lot before they could put down the pavement. A bear came out and just watched them for the longest time. Seemingly amused at what these strange animals were doing picking up rocks before it lumbered off and decided it was something better to do someplace else. I've been asked by a number of people why are we running so many reruns on Beyond Today right now. We're in the process of, if you'll notice, about every nine months there's a review process in which Mr. Salyer, Mr. Kylo and others come in and review what we're doing.

Usually they have this creative team that comes up with, okay, now we want you to do this. They give us a whole new format. We go and do that for about six months. Then they sit down and say, okay, now we want you to do this. They just created a whole new way. They wanted some things done. We're in the process of creating a whole new set of programs with a little different format. We started those before the feast. We'll be doing a regular schedule of new programs after the feast. So new programs will be coming out. It is interesting, every place I go, the stories that people tell about Beyond Today and different situations they've seen.

Someone told me here yesterday about where they were at work. And they went by the computer and there was, I think, four or five people gathered around watching a program. And we just hear more and more stories like this all the time. And in marketing, it's called a tipping point.

We're still a long ways from a tipping point. But what happens is a tipping point is when any product reaches a point where it literally becomes part of the consciousness of society. And you know, if I say Coca-Cola, you know what I mean. And it takes a long time. You either have to spend a lot of money up front or it takes a long time to slowly build this momentum up until it's a tipping point.

You have tips. And enough people know about you that they tell other people. That's what happens. Enough know they tell somebody else, you know. They tell, hey, I saw this program and they tell people about it. It's a long time before we reach a tipping point. But we know that it's getting closer. We know that it's getting closer. Up in Canada, they recently bought some broadcast time, some commercial time.

The amount of responses just skyrocketed compared to what they were getting before. I was over in Australia this summer doing a good news seminar. And this woman walks up to me and she says, you know, this is so exciting. She said, I just went to a big Pentecostal revival. And she said they had the man who did their television program and we weren't even allowed to go talk to him. And here you are walking among the crowd and we can talk to you. And I thought, we're not on television in Australia. But she watched it on the Internet every week. Every week she watched it. And so there was a case where that person was, you know, we're not on television there and yet they were able to see the program because of the Internet.

It was also interesting how many new people came up, brand new people. And the questions that they had, one couple came up, the man said, could you come talk to us privately? He was a young man and woman.

I said, yes. And so we got in a private setting and he said, we don't know what to do. He said, we've been watching beyond today. We started to get the good news. We realized that you shouldn't keep Christmas. He says, we come from a Greek Orthodox Church. He says, if we stop keeping Christmas, you don't understand. It means our entire family and community will ostracize us. We will be shunned. We will be put out and we will be shunned. What should we do? And I said, well, I can only tell you that from the experiences I've had and from talking to other people, when you put God first and you do what is right, God will work it out.

And he looked at his wife and they both smiled and said, that's the conclusion we had come to. So, these individuals we reach, which God calls individuals, the world isn't being called today. Individuals are being called today. The Gospel is preached to the world and individuals are called. Those individuals are very important.

And so keep praying for those people and God will reach people and he will bring those people wherever he wants them to be. We're here. We have churches. We have people. We have congregations for people to come to and be nurtured. So, pray for God that God will continue to do the work and that we can be part of it.

How many of you remember what it was like to be engaged, to be married?

That's a unique time of life. My wife and I were talking recently. We saw a young couple that was engaged to be married and they didn't seem to be that excited about it. They... I don't know. They just... Okay, we're getting married. It seemed like they were playing it. You know, playing being married.

And we were talking about our engagement. We were remembering what it was like. And the last few months of our engagement, we lived in... My parents lived in Western Pennsylvania. I was in Western Pennsylvania. I graduated from college and I was trying to go around to every radio station trying to get a job. She was back in Michigan, getting ready for the wedding. And here we were separated for three or four months during that time period, preparing for the wedding, and we would call each other and how you would look forward to... Oh, it's almost time. Almost time for me to call her. And we would just talk on the phone for hours and how excited we were just to hear each other's voice. And how we looked forward, it's only a month. It's only two weeks and we'll get to see each other. Remember preparing for that day. You ladies will really remember that. It was easy for us guys.

But you ladies will really remember what it was like to prepare for that wedding day. Because you had to do a lot of work, and you worried, and you cried. And mom did this and mom did that, and sometimes you got upset because it seemed like your mom or your sister or your girlfriends were taking over your wedding day.

And everybody's involved, and there's all this excitement, and you're on this emotional roller coaster as you're preparing. And this goes wrong, and that goes wrong, and the caterer suddenly calls and says, it's going to cost two dollars more. And most of the time the groom's not even involved in this. He's happily just sort of... I get to get married soon.

And the poor bride is going through all this preparation, all this work, and all this stress. And yet at the same time, you can't wait for that day to come. Because now you're going to be together. Now you can face life together. My wife and I have talked about how if a couple came to us and wanted to counsel, and they had as little as we had when we got married, we would suggest they don't get married. I mean, we were living...we both had minimum wage jobs. She worked for the city of this small town. I worked at the small town radio station. We lived in government housing. It was a three-bedroom apartment. The three bedrooms were empty, so we lived in the living room because it was the only room they had furniture in. And we put sheets over the windows and said, we'll make something of this. Two years later, it was full of furniture, and there was carpet, and we actually had drapes. But it didn't happen right away. It took a long time. And yet, we thought we were having the time of our lives. We still talk about the times when we would go get a pizza, because we could afford a pizza, and sit down and look at our little 12-inch black-and-white TV set. Everybody else had color TV, a little black-and-white TV set. And we sat there eating our pizza in our one room of furniture, and we were the happiest people on the earth. We were just happy to be together, facing life. It was going to work out. We were going to work hard. We had family. We had God.

We look back on those times as they were hard times, but we also remember the joy and the preparation and the excitement of those days. When we look at the role that Jesus Christ plays in salvation, and we talk about these holy days that we're in, these fall holy days, we've talked about and gone through the Feast of Trumpets, in which we celebrate Jesus Christ as King and Lord and Master. We celebrated the Day of Atonement, where we look at Him as High Priest and what He is doing now in carrying out God's salvation as an atonement so that we have the privilege of coming before God and having a relationship with both God the Father and with Jesus Christ. We look forward to this time when He's going to reign on the earth, the Millennium, which we're celebrating here, Feast of Tabernacles. There's another role He plays during this fall holy day season that this pictures, and that is that He is going to be a bride groom. He's going to marry somebody, and He's anticipating and preparing for that marriage. And of course, we understand, and you know, you've all been here many years, most of you have been here many years, you understand that the Church is the bride. The saints that have died throughout history are going to be resurrected. Those who are alive are going to come together with that group of people, and they're going to be resurrected and changed and become the bride of Jesus Christ. I want to talk about the bride whom you are and that relationship with Jesus Christ that's different than other relationships, and how unique it is to be part of the bride of Jesus Christ. It is a different relationship, and there are certain questions that we need to ask ourselves, and we're going to tie this in with what was talked about yesterday, this preparation, this patience. Who we are as the bride, what it means to be the bride, and what it means in your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We talk about our personal relationship with God the Father a lot, but we're going to talk about our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Because we are called to marry Him. There will be some men that will not be in the resurrection because they never learned how to be a good wife.

You and I are here to learn how to be a good wife. And so for us men, there's something we can learn from our wives, because this is how we are to relate to Jesus Christ. When you look at, of course, marriage, it's unfortunate in our society today. Marriage has become nothing more than a sort of a ceremony, an agreement, divorce is easy, marriages are throw away. Marriage was designed by God to be a union between a husband and wife for their entire lives to create a family. The husband and wife create a family simply by being married. If they have children, that family then is expanded. And it was meant to be a lifelong experience, a bonding of those two people until death. When you look at the Scripture, marriage is very important. You know, when you look at the first two covenants made with human beings, you've got the Sabbath covenant, right? And you've got the marriage covenant. Genesis, verse 3 chapters. Marriage covenant is right there at the beginning. That's how important it is for human beings to understand marriage. And Christ is coming back to marry the church. Now, I want to go through today some of the marriage customs in the Scripture. And tie it into some of the Jewish marriage customs throughout the Israelite and Jewish marriage customs throughout their history. Some of these customs are still kept in some Orthodox communities today. We don't have an actual marriage ceremony that's outlined in the Scripture. We do know some of the customs. And some of those customs go clear back to patriarchal times. And the customs they had then were similar to the customs they had at the time of Jesus Christ.

So if you were in Judea in the first century, these would have been the basic marriage customs the two people would have gone through in order to become married. I'm going to go through those marriage customs, and then let's look at them and let's learn about our relationship as the bride. We are the bride. Our relationship with our coming husband. Both his viewpoint of us and what is to be our viewpoint of him. Let's go back to Genesis, because one thing you will find about whether it's here with the ancient Hebrews or the Israelite customs or the Jewish customs of the first century is that the first aspect of any marriage, the first step in any marriage, was that the bridegroom and bride were selected for each other by their parents. Now, this sounds strange to us. We go out and we think that marriage is two people falling in love. Sort of like falling off a bicycle. It's a shame today when you think about how many people get married and have absolutely no preparation for marriage. I do premarital counseling sometimes, and I'll sit down with my wife and she'll say, you look depressed, and I'll say, I am. These people have no idea how to make this work, but they sure have a lot of good feelings about each other. But they have no idea how to make this work. In ancient times, in the Jewish society of the first century, little boys and little girls were trained from childhood how to be a wife and mother and how to be a husband and a father. You were trained that that was one of the most important jobs of your life. Worship God and be a good husband and wife. That was even more important than making money. You know, I look back now when I was a child and all the good things that my mother did for me that I had no idea that she was doing. I can still remember how many times she told me, I mean, I'm like only eight years old, okay? Son, when you get married, you have trouble with your wife? Don't you dare come home to me. I'll kick you out in the street. That'll be your wife, and that's your responsibility and you go take care of her. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. I'm scared to death. I mean, boy, I tell you, the first time my wife and I had an argument, I wasn't going home. I'd sleep out with the drunks on the street before I'd go home.

But they were trained. And what's our society today? You know, how many young men grow up never having a father? I mean, that's one of the greatest crises in our country today is young men who don't know how to be men, because they don't grow up with fathers teaching them.

How many young women, if you sat down with a young girl, say, 17, 18, 19 years old and explained what the Bible says, what a woman is supposed to be as a wife and as a mother, would say, oh, that's restrictive. That's some kind of old-fashioned male chauvinism.

And then we wonder why marriages don't work. The creator of marriage knows how it works.

And it's supposed to teach us about something even greater, a relationship that the church is going to have with Jesus Christ. These marriages teach us about that. Well, in ancient times, Mom and Dad spent a great deal of effort checking out who you should marry in the community. There was lots of discussion among parents. The rabbi got involved. Now, I guarantee you, if you lived in Judea in a small village in the first century, that the kids were figuring out, along with the parents, ooh, I like her. Okay. There's some involvement of the young people, too. But it is an arranged marriage. It's interesting. I was talking to a minister recently who travels all over the world. And he says he goes into countries where they have arranged marriages. I've met people who come from countries who have arranged marriages. And it's interesting because when they do surveys in their countries, marital happiness is generally higher than those in countries like the United States where we get to pick our own mate. It's the exact opposite of what you think. Because they're so careful, I want my daughter to be happy. So I'm going to find a man that's going to make her happy. So there's a lot of work involved in this. Genesis 24, verse 1. This is thousands of years before the time of Jesus Christ. But this custom that we see here carried on was still around. When Jesus Christ talked about Him being the bridegroom, and He was talking about marriage customs, those people still had arranged marriages. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. So Abraham said to the oldest servant of his house who ruled over all that he had, Please put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife from my son, from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell. Now he looked at the Canaanites who were pagans, and he said, No. Isaac will not marry one of these pagans. So he calls in his chief servant. Now I don't know about you, and we don't have this custom today, I'm sort of glad. If my boss set me down, made me put my hand under his thigh, and swear, I would figure this has to be real important. I don't know about you, I'm real uncomfortable about my hand or some man's thigh, okay? So this is an important thing that's happening right here. He says, you have to go find Isaac a wife. Now Isaac's not a boy at this time, he's about 40 years old.

He says, you've got to find him a wife, because there's just no wives. Some of you think, well, wow, I have a trial. I'm a Christian. I can't find a husband or a wife among people who are following God. Well, neither could Isaac. The trials we go through aren't all new, by the way. They're not new trials. People who have been following God have been going through every trial we go through since the beginning of time. And so, he says, you have to go find her or him a wife. He says, so you have to go off to the country of my family and find a distant relative who's going to have some background and understanding of our values, how we see life, what we do, how we worship God, and bring her here. And the servant left, and he knew he better not come back without her. Now, the story's fascinating, because the servant goes off, he goes to a foreign country, he goes to the place where all these traveling nomads are, and he's got to find some relative. He asks God, and God takes him to Rebecca, and he goes to the family of Rebecca, and he says, you have been chosen by God to go marry my master.

Now, Rebecca is probably very young, probably middle teens. That was usually the custom for girls to get married at the time. She was personally selected by God to be Isaac's wife. He had to wait until he was 40. She was personally selected by God. You know, when we look at the calling process, the Gospels preached, seeds go out all over the place. We know from the parable of the sower that very few actually take seed and last. Many are called if you were chosen. When you responded to God's call, you were personally chosen by the father to be the wife of his son. Now, I want you to think about that a minute, because if you had to go out and pick, I know that anyone that comes around...

I remember my dad one time, a guy came over to visit my one sister, and my dad came out and cleaned his shotgun in front of him.

I laughed. That boy was so scared. He didn't know whether he was going to shoot him or not. I remember telling a young man one time, you know, you're taking my daughter out, and I didn't like your conduct. It was a big thing, but I was going to let him know I was dad. I said, you know, most men have beat the tar out of you for that, but today I won't. But it better never happen again. He married my daughter later, but he and I get along just fine now.

It's a very personal thing for a father to pick a mate for one of his children. You were picked to become the wife of Jesus Christ. That's a special relationship. You were selected by the father to come into a very close relationship with Jesus Christ to be his help. Right? We're to be the help to Jesus Christ in the work that he does. Look at... You can leave a marker here. Let's go to John 6. Chapter 6. It is important to know the work of Jesus Christ because you and I have been called to become the help to Jesus Christ now and in the future. John 6. Verse 42. People were looking at the work that Jesus was doing. They were saying, This is a carpenter's son. I mean, who does he think he is? He had to teach like a rabbi. And they said, verse 42, It is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know. How is it then that he says, I have come down from heaven? And Jesus therefore answered and said to them, Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up in the last day.

The call went out, and you responded, and God chose you. Now, he chose you to be his son, his daughter. There's all these different relationships we have. There's all these different symbols in the Bible and roles that we understand God as Father. We understand him as judge, so that we can have a relationship with him on these different levels.

God, your Father, chose you to become the bride of his eternal son. And it's a very special relationship. Now, the second thing that had to happen after the parents chose these maids was that the bridegroom had to pay a price. That bride had to be worth so much, he was willing to pay something for her. And this gave the opportunity for the dad to get as much out of that boy as he could. Now, it's interesting, at the time of Abraham, the father didn't negotiate with the suitor. The brother did. I find that interesting. You know, the brother negotiated. Let's go back to Genesis 24. Laban was actually Rebecca's brother. And you look in verse 52, because what happens is, you know, the servant of Abraham goes to the family, explains to him who Abraham was, that God had sent him there, and this miracle taking place where Becca was chosen to become the bride of a man she's never seen. A man that she is now told about. A man that she's told this is a great prince who's over this big family. Remember, Abraham had hundreds of men who were soldiers. So he had a whole tribe. You know, when he went into Egypt, why did Pharaoh notice him? He was the leader of a nomadic tribe. He had his family, plus he had all these servants. And she's going to go meet this prince who she's never met, who's a man of great character, who is probably quite a bit older than her. And so he tells her about him.

In verse 52, And it came to pass when Abraham's servant heard their words. Well, verse 51, see Laban and Bethuwell, the father, so the brother negotiates, talks it over with the father, verse 51. Here is Rebecca before you. Take her and go, let her be your master's son's wife as the Lord has spoken. And it came to pass when Abraham's servant heard their words that he worshiped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth. Then the servant brought out jewelry of silver, jewelry of gold and clothing and gave them to Rebecca. He also gave precious things to her brother and to her mother.

And so they had to bring all these gifts.

The greater the bride, the greater the price that had to be paid.

The more that man wanted that bride, because he's a grown man, he has to go negotiate. In this case, the servant did.

Or Dan has to negotiate for him, but in these negotiations, how much do you want that bride? And no family is going to give up a daughter easily, right?

And so the extent of his love is exhibited by the greatness of the gift that he brings.

The greatness of the gift that he brings. Paul said in 1 Corinthians, you were bought with a price.

The bridegroom already paid for you.

Understand that. In this marriage ceremony that's going to happen in the future, you have already been chosen by the Father. You've already been selected to be the bride, and Christ already paid the price.

The love of the bridegroom to the bride. Remember what you would do for her before you married her. Hopefully we're still doing that for her now. But remember what you would do as a young man when you said, this woman is for me.

Remember how we would make fools of ourselves trying to impress her. Remember all the things we would do. What price were we not willing to pay?

Jesus Christ has already paid the dowry for you.

He considered this bride to be of such value.

He paid his life.

There's no place in the Old Testament where you find any human being that that's the price they're willing to pay. There's no place in the New Testament except one. You find one bridegroom, one bridegroom willing to pay everything.

See, there is a relationship of love that we have with the Father as a child to a father. And there is a relationship we have to Christ as a bride to a bridegroom. We miss that sometimes. We miss that understanding of what it is to be this bride. And the love that we are to have to that bridegroom.

He has already paid the price. Now, once the price was paid, the couple became betrothed. You say, well, they're engaged. No. A betrothal was not an engagement. You know, an engagement in the United States, what do we do? Well, you give her a ring, and now we're going to plan to get married. Some people will get it. Okay, we'll get married next year sometime. I mean, engagements break up all the time. A betrothal was a contract. The price was already paid. The couple couldn't live together yet. They couldn't have sexual relations yet. They couldn't be in the same house or live in the same house together. But they were betrothed. They were already legally married. They were already legally married. You know, in Matthew 1, you see that.

Matthew 1 with Mary and Joseph. Matthew 1, verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary would be trolled to Joseph. Joseph paid her price. Joseph went to, probably, Joseph's older than her, he probably went and negotiated for Mary very possibly. It's a very important time. He was married. He was married. He was married. He was married. Mary, very possibly, is in her mid-to-late teens, early 20s at the latest. She's a young girl.

Probably mid-to-late teens, early 20s at the latest. Custom was, remember, people only, the life expectancy in the first century is estimated to be around 40 to 45 years old.

So, they viewed life differently. It was 70 to 80. Think if you only lived half as long as we do now. People tended that life was lived differently and girls were usually married off at a much earlier age in these arranged marriages.

So, here you have a, I know, maybe 18-year-old. He's older. He's already paid her price. We know what kind of woman she is, Joseph must have paid a very high price for her.

We also know something about Joseph in this. So, they're betrothed. They are legally married, but they can't live together yet. They're not allowed to touch each other yet.

After his mother, I'm sorry, betrothed, before they came together, before they were now in the next stage of marriage, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. Putting her away meant he was going to go ahead and marry her, spend the rest of his life with her, but he was not going to have any kind of normal marriage relationship with her. In public, they would seem to be married. But in private, they would not be married. No one would know that him and her. Now, that's a remarkable man.

He loved this young girl so much, he said, I would rather spend the rest of my life, sell of it, than make her into a public example. And he can imagine how betrayed he must have felt. He'd paid a real high price for a girl that was supposed to be a virgin. And being a virgin was a very important part of this deal. That this woman was for one man, and this one man was for this woman. Nobody else. That's a weird idea today, isn't it?

And so, of course, God comes and talks to him and says not to do that.

And so, he doesn't. Verse 24 says, Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord command. He said, you go marry this girl. She hasn't been with anybody else. This is God's work, and you have a job to do. You're going to raise the Messiah. Now, that's got to... I don't know if that ruins your day or makes your day. I'm not sure what that does. You're going to raise the Messiah.

And so then he took him... He took him as his wife, and did not know her. Until she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus, just like he was supposed to do. But they were already betrothed. This betrothal period is a period of preparation by both.

But it is public. There's a public proclamation. I am betrothed to this person. It says there is to be a public proclamation in your life and my life through our example that we aren't the same people we used to be.

We are being prepared as a wife for our husband. 1 Corinthians 11.

1 Corinthians 11, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 11, verse 2.

It's not the Scripture I wanted. Anyways, Paul talks about how he has betrothed the church to Christ. In fact, he was worried about the church. He's worried about the church because he had betrothed. He saw his job as bringing people together to be betrothed to Christ as ministers. 2 Corinthians. Thank you. Okay, let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

There you go. Actually, my notes say 2 Corinthians chapter 11. So I really didn't make a mistake after all.

2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 1.

Paul says, Oh, that you would bear with me for a little folly. Indeed, you do bear with me. Paul has a unique way of writing. He's sarcastic at times. Other times, he's self-effacing. He says, Okay, just bear with me a little longer here.

You may well put up with it. He says, If you hear this, don't respond to it. Put up with it. Don't respond to this.

We are being brought together because we are betrothed. And Paul worried that this simple idea, this simple idea would be lost, and that the church there in Corinth would begin as they already had. Remember, it was a deteriorating church that was brought out yesterday. It was the most dysfunctional church you can ever imagine. If you and I walked into Corinth, we'd have probably walked out the door. People hollering and screaming, talking in tongues, arguing, fighting, all the stuff going on, no order to anything.

Sins all over the place.

He says, he tells them, You've lost this simple idea. The simple idea, yeah, Christ is your Savior. Christ is your Master. Christ is your King. Christ is your Husband. Now, you know, you look at a King and you worship a King.

You look at your Master, you obey a Master. A wife does what to a Husband? She loves her Husband.

So this is the relationship that we are to have with Christ. Do you realize not everybody that will be in the Kingdom of God will be part of the Bride of Christ?

Not everybody resurrected into the Kingdom, only the Church and the saints, that first resurrection. The Bride of Christ are those called for a very specific reason. That's why the rest of the world isn't being called today. The whole world isn't being called today. Because in this time of salvation, God is creating the Bride, the Help, the Partner for Jesus Christ, to do the next stage that this time represents, that the last great day represents. The next stage, when all humanity has the opportunity to come into the family of God, and Jesus Christ is going to reign, and His Bride will be there with Him. And we are now betrothed to Him.

The fourth thing that happened after this betrothal still happens today in some Orthodox communities. The Bride and the groom now come together, they're betrothed. Do you know how they celebrate this covenant they've made? Because it's a covenant. When you're betrothed, the legal covenant has already happened.

They share a glass of wine. What do we do every year when we celebrate the legal covenant that we have with God the Father and Jesus Christ? We take a little one.

And so now the couple celebrated. They celebrated that they were going to get married. The betrothal period was a time for them to get to know each other more, too. If they didn't know each other very well, I think of Rebecca, and the difficulty she must have had. You read that story, though, there's something very interesting about Rebecca. They went to Rebecca and asked her if she really wanted to go. You can imagine the parents. They'd think, wait, wait, wait. We'll never see our daughter again. We're going to send our 16, 17, 18-year-old girl off, and we're never going to see her again. And she's going to go, oh, we remember Abraham. And she's going to marry Isaac. That's a long ways away. And Rebecca said, I want to go.

Rebecca wasn't forced to go. That's why Isaac and Rebecca, in very many ways, is a type of Christ in the Church. Rebecca didn't know him, but she wanted to go meet him. Now, we know Christ because of the relationship we have with him, but you can see the symbolism. But she was willing and wanted to go, and that's when her brother and her father said, then go. Because they kept trying to make the servants stay longer and stay longer and stay longer. No, no, we don't want her to leave. We don't want her to leave. And the servant said, I have to go. And Rebecca said, yes, we have to go. I want to go meet this guy.

And so off she went to marry her husband. After this patrol period, and they celebrate with a glass of wine, the fifth thing that happens is that they begin to celebrate. They begin to prepare for the wedding itself. And the man has to do something very specific. In ancient Israel, he had to go build a house or fix up a house for them to live in. John, Chapter 14.

I remember when Kim and I were in that engagement period, and I'm back trying to get a job and trying to find an apartment. A place for her to live. I'm thinking, man, I wish I could afford something better. I wish I could, you know, I wish I had something nicer.

But it's all we had. Because why? You want to have this perfect place for your wife to come. You want her to come and say, oh, you know, there's flowers in the yard and this nice little house and not government housing, but... You want this perfect place. This is what Jesus Christ said to his disciples on the night of that Passover before he was going to go pay the price for them.

Verse 1, Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house or many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go prepare a place where he says, I gotta go build the house, guys. I gotta go get things ready. Because you're going to come help me change the world. You're going to come help me in the kingdom. But I gotta go get it ready. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may also be.

He says, I'm coming back for you. I just gotta go get things ready. Now what did the bride do during this time period? The bride spent this patrol period with mom, with sisters, with aunts, with cousins, with friends, preparing for the wedding, getting instructions, what it's like to live with these strange creatures called men. There was all this information, all this learning, all this excitement, all this fear.

Now let me explain some things about men.

Sometimes they're not very attentive. Sometimes they're this way, and she's receiving all this instruction in this preparation. And during this patrol period, there's a mixture of excitement and a mixture of stress. Now we heard that yesterday. Remember? Dr. Patrick's sermon? That's because we're in the patrolable period. That's why we're going through this. You... it's part of... it's part of life. We've been betrothed to Christ. This is the period of life we're in. You know, every period of life has something different in it.

My kids, when they were young, I don't know how many times they heard. You know, they... I wouldn't have to say it after a while. That's not fair! I just look at it and they'd say, I know. Who told you life was fair?

We go through different stages of life. We go through different things. You were betrothed. When you were... when God gave you His Spirit, you were selected to be a daughter, a son in His family. You were selected to be His personal representative on the earth. There was a whole lot of things God was going to now do in your life. And one of them is, you are now being prepared to be a help to Jesus Christ. You were just not called for salvation.

You and I weren't just called for salvation. You and I were called to become the bride of Jesus Christ, to help Him in the work that He has to do. We better know what His work is.

We better understand His plan. We better be willing to submit, because He is our husband. We better be willing to trust.

We better be willing to love.

He went to prepare a place. Ephesians 5. How many times do we read Ephesians 5 when we talk about... You know, every marriage sermon you've probably ever heard in the church, almost every one of them goes to Ephesians 5, where Paul outlines the relationship between husband and wife.

But remember, there's another truth here being taught in addition to how husband and wife should relate to each other. I mean, notice verse 32. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Paul says, I'm telling you about husbands and wives and how we're to relate to each other, but I'm also telling you one of the greatest mysteries of all time. I'm telling you how we are to respond to our husband. Now, how does our husband respond to us? Well, first of all, he's already paid the price, and it's the greatest price anybody could ever pay. That's the first thing it's already had.

But notice verse... Let's look at verse 23. For the husband is the head of the wife. I always like to just end there.

I like that. As also, Christ is the head of the church. Well, I like that. And he is the Savior of the body. Oh, I get a saver. I mean, that's a whole different approach, isn't it? Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands and everything. I like that. That's sort of good, too. Now, the rest of it... It's taken me a long time to grow into the rest of it. Well, to learn to like the rest of it. I'm not sure I've grown into it yet. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. Now, that's a remarkable statement to us husbands, because what it says is, you pay whatever price it takes for her.

Sometimes when I do marriage counseling, I tell the guy, I say, okay, think of your wife with another man. Usually makes the guy mad. I say, good. Now, go win her back, son.

Think of her with another man. Go win her back. What price are you willing to pay for her?

He says here, remember the price our husband paid for us. Already paid. He's off preparing the house. He's off getting everything ready just for us. And in the mansions, right, there's many mansions, there's many rooms. He says, I'm making a perfect place for you guys. I'm making a perfect place for my bride.

He's doing his part. He gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her by the washing of water by the Word, that he might present her to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. This is what it means by being a spiritual virgin. It means that we give up all of society's ideas. We give up all of Satan's ideas about worship, about right and wrong. And we become fit, the perfect fit, the perfect complement to our husband. So our husband doesn't worry about what we're going to do next. Our husband doesn't worry about... I mean, let's face it. You've been married for a while. You don't worry about where your wife goes, where your husband goes. Oh, I've gone to the store. Okay. Right? You know who they are. You don't worry about what they're doing, where they're going, because you trust each other. How much do we trust our husband? And how much can our husband trust us? How dedicated are we are, are we, in this betrothal period to becoming the pure, perfect fit for our husband? Actually, it might be easier for some of you wives to figure that out than us guys. I have to become the most pure, perfect wife, submissive fit to my husband so that his work gets done. That's the relationship you and I are to have with Jesus Christ.

Now, the sixth thing is that the bridegroom would then go to meet the bride. Now, in some cases, that could be a long way. He lived in another town. No? Well, the wedding day is three days from now, and it takes three days to get there, so he would pack up his horse, pack up his donkey, his friends come out, and they would go.

And if you were poor, you walked. But the bridegroom went to meet the bride, and she prepared. And they would pay any price just to see each other. It didn't matter how hard it was. It didn't matter if he had to camp out on the side of the road a couple of nights on the way to her house.

Whatever it took to get there. Remember when you felt that way about a person? You still feel that way about him? You still feel that way about her? Think about how Christ feels about us. He's coming back. You don't think he anticipates every moment of coming back? He's prepared. I guess the variable in the equation is, is the bride prepared? Because he's prepared. He's ready. He wants his bride.

He wants to do the work of building the family of God, bringing untold billions of children into the family. That's what his job is. That's what he wants to do. Are we prepared for that? Are we ready for that? Are we a bride that's waiting? When my wife and I were getting married, I really anticipated that day. We were getting married on a Saturday night after the sabbath. I really anticipated that Friday because I got off work Friday and I was going to leave at 5 a.m. and I was going to drive the seven-hour drive from Western Pennsylvania up to Michigan. We were going to have that afternoon, like 3 o'clock that afternoon, we were going to have our rehearsal dinner.

We were supposed to meet with the pastor and go through some more premarital counseling. It was going to be this great day. Well, of course, as you've already figured out, we didn't have much money. My car... I tell you, I was proud of the car. If you would have seen it. Remember the old American Motors Corporation? Of course, they're out of business. They had a car they called the Javelin. It was the poor man's Corvette. They'd go 160 miles an hour.

It was sharp gray, had racing stripes down the back. I had these big racing tires on the back. Of course, every two weeks I had to go to the junkyard and replace them because I couldn't afford those big, wide racing tires. So I had to go to junkyards and find them and put them on there. The only last couple weeks they'd blow out. I'd have up to two blowouts a day, but, man, this thing just looked good. So I leave about 5 a.m. My sister's with me. She's all excited. She's an older teenager.

Her older brother is going to get married. Here I am, the adult. I got a sports car and I got a wife coming. Well, we drive about an hour there on the Pennsylvania turn bike and it starts to rain. So I turn on the windshield wipers and they do this. I can't see. So I pull up into the Pennsylvania turn bike. They have those rest areas where they have gas stations. I pull up and I say, well, sorry that there won't be anybody here until 7 o'clock that can work on a car.

Okay, so I wait around 7 o'clock and the mechanics come in and I go out and I go to start my car and it won't start. And I go in and there's two mechanics in there. And, of course, I'm this young kid. I'm 22 years old. I looked at these two old grizzly mechanics.

And he said, hey, can you help me push my car in? No. One of them said, son, that car's too heavy. We won't push it. This is way out in the parking lot, right? I said, but I'm getting married tomorrow. So? So I go out and I push that car all the way across that parking lot. And I get it up in the bay. And by the time I get in the bay, I'm not a happy man. So I get out of that and I look at that mechanic and I said, you will fix my car.

And he said, okay, son, I'll fix your car. Well, the starter was out. They didn't have a starter. He said, well, you're going to have to call and get somebody to come get you. So I called. Got the phone book out. Found the quickest place off the freeway there. Called him and said, can you fix it? He said, yeah, bring it on. You know, get over it. We'll have to tow it. Okay, but our tow guy doesn't come in at 8 o'clock. Okay. So about 8.30, the guy shows up and he's towing me down the street. My cousins, who had left hours after I did, is coming up and says, hey, isn't that Gary's car behind that tow truck?

So they get behind us and we go off into the, you know, boonies someplace and this guy fixes it. Now they're in there fixing it. And the whole time these guys are fixing it, which takes hours, the mechanics are saying, you know, son, this is a message from God. You are not to get married. Let me tell you something. In this betrothal period, Satan keeps telling you, don't do this. And these were messengers to Satan. There was no doubt about it. And they kept telling me, don't marry this girl.

She's not worth it. You don't do this. This is a sign. This is a sign. And they just, I mean, the whole two hours they worked on this car, the mechanics kept telling me, don't do it. Don't do it. It's a sign guy. Kid, we're married. You don't want to get married.

Don't do it. So we finally get it fixed. And off we go. And I think, oh, good. I'll be, I called her. I told her we'll be about three or four hours late, but we'll be there because I'm going to get married. So we get on the Pennsylvania turnpike. I mean, the Ohio turnpike. We seem to be going along just fine. You know, down where the manifold and your tailpipe comes out.

Okay. That little, that valve cracked right in half. I knew something was wrong immediately because the car filled up with smoke. And of course, nothing's going through the muffler. So I mean, the sound is so loud, you can't hear. And so there's, and I don't know what's happening. And I can't see because the car is literally filled up with smoke, but I'm nothing stopping me now. I'm dry.

I drive for two hours down the Ohio turnpike, a car filled up with smoke. But I wanted to get married. I think you're starting to see the point here, folks. We're betrothed, right? Now, he's coming back for us. He'll pay any price to get back. Are we paying any price to get there?

How bad do we want to be there? So anyways, after about two hours, I get so exhausted, I can't breathe. I take my sister out. She's sitting with my cousins. And I can't breathe because I'm just breathing in this smoke that's coming right out of the engine. And my cousin, Tim, comes and says, well, I'll drive for a while. I said, okay. So I sat in the passenger seat and I fell asleep. Well, we had driven, I don't know, I said about 10 minutes, and we pulled over inside the road.

Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I didn't. I got in the other car. That's right. I get out and went in the other car. And Tim's driving, and I'm back there falling asleep. I can breathe for the first time in two hours. And we're pulling over on the side of the road. And I got up, and I woke, and I said, what's the matter? And my other cousin said, I don't know. Your car's on fire.

The firewire, the firewall had got so hot, the carpet had just burst into flames. So there's my cousin running out with a Coke can, filling up water on the side of the road and throwing it in the car. So we all got out, got enough Coke cans to put the fire out. So I said, okay, folks, everybody in the other car, I'll drive this stuff myself. Well, my cousin's fiancé was with us. He was learning a lot about marriage at this point. And he said, okay, let's drive for a while. We drove for a while, and then we switched over, and he's driving. Everything's pretty good. And then it starts to rain again. And we remembered we never fixed the windshield wipers. The car's filled up with smoke. You can't hear. I mean, we're shouting each other. When we get out, we're shouting each other because our hearing's gone. And my cousin is driving down the road with his head out the window like this. And a semi went back. I'll never forget this in my life. I'll never forget him looking at me, and his face and his glasses were covered with about three inches of sludge. Because what's amazing is we still kept driving 65 miles an hour looking at each other. He's trying to figure out what happened. He can't see anything. Covered with this sludge.

We're leaving the Ohio turnpike. And you know where you pay the guy, you give him his ticket. And the man leaned out and said, son, don't you ever end Ohio with that car again.

He literally said it.

Well, we're only 100 miles away.

You know, good. We're going to make it. Of course, it's dark. I've been on the road like 14 hours. And things are good. I'm finally going to get to see my bride.

And the brakes go out.

And there was no way I was going to stop.

I drove the last 100 miles. I could not hear. I could not see. I could not breathe. Because of the carbon monoxide poisoning, every muscle in my body hurt. And to stop the car, I had to pump and downshift.

You know, if anybody pulled out in front of me, they were dead.

And I staggered out of the car. It's like 11 o'clock at night. My eyes are red. My skin's a funny yellow color. I'm literally staggering. I can't stand up anymore.

But I made it. But I made it.

Now, remember that. Remember what you would have done when you were engaged.

Because you loved that person. Right? And you couldn't believe that that person loved you. Well, what does... No, Chris, I can never forget what women see in us guys anyways. It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

But they do.

We are betrothed. We are headed towards the marriage.

And nobody told us it was going to be easy. We thought it was going to be easy. It's just like every child thinks life's going to be fair. And it's not.

It's not going to be easy. It's never easy. Not something worth this much.

The bigger the price, the bigger the cost. Right? We know that in life. You figure that out. The bigger the price, the bigger the cost.

To be the child of God. To be the help-meet of Jesus Christ in the Kingdom.

Is an enormous prize. There is no greater prize. And after they came together, there was a merry ceremony. And then they went out to create their family.

Two last points as we wrap this up.

In how you and I can be prepared as the bride. Two things we need to remember. One is in Revelation, Chapter 19. Revelation, Chapter 19.

This is after Jesus Christ returns.

You know, it's very interesting when you look at Matthew 24, where Jesus said that He would return for the elect's sake.

Humanity will be on the brink of total destruction. And you know, He could just step back and let humanity wipe themselves out and resurrect them. Right?

But that's not what He does. He says He returns for what? The elect's sake. Christ comes back at the moment He does because His bride is there.

Verse 7. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be a raid and fine linen, clean and bright. For the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. We are His bride, so we act like His bride.

We walk and talk and live like His bride. Now, we fail sometimes. We all fall down.

But we are in a preparation period. We are being prepared to be the bride. We're not quite ready to be the bride. We're being prepared to be the bride. We're still in that training time. We're still learning because we're going to have to serve Him as our husband to create the family of God.

We are the help specifically created for Him.

Then He said to me, right, blessed are those who are called to the married supper of the Lamb. Blessed are those who are called.

Our wedding garments must be white.

Do we know how our husband wants things done? How he wants us to handle our problems? How he wants us to think? How he wants us to act? People say, well, what does it matter how I dress in public? Think about your husband or wife. Is it okay for your... Would you care if your wife walked out in her underwear and went down to the grocery store? I don't think so. Well, what does our husband want us to dress like? What does our husband want us to act like?

Do we love our husband? And that is a question we haven't asked ourselves. I don't think too much. How much do we love our husband?

How important is that relationship to us?

Because that's what we're being prepared to be. The whole world gets called into salvation the right to choose. You're not just being called for salvation, you're being called to choose to be the children of God and the bride of Jesus Christ. How much do you love your husband?

The second thing is in Revelation 22.

Verse 12.

The very end of the book of Revelation, he says, And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. But outside are dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral, and murderers and idolaters and whoever loves and practices a lie. He says, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you, these things in the churches. I am the root of the offspring of David, to the bright and morning star. But notice verse 17. So we know this is Christ saying this.

He's going to give the kingdom to the Father, right?

That's how this ends. Well, it's how it begins. The beginning of the story is Christ giving the kingdom to the Father, and then the real life begins. But notice verse 17. And the Spirit, the Spirit of God, and the bride say. You know, remember when you were engaged, how you went and told everybody? I used to take a picture of my wife that I was engaged to, so I could show everybody. I remember a guy saying, whoa, man, if I ever met a girl like that, I'd marry her too.

Remember girls showing off that ring? I never figured out that part of women. A ring, and everybody goes, ahhhh. They say there's no difference between men and women. Can you imagine a man scoring a touchdown and everybody going, ahhhh.

That's why the Pittsburgh Steelers don't even have cheerleaders. There's no, ahhhh, in football. Okay? Anyways, yes, my brother-in-law, I can get the Steelers into any sermon. It's possible. Okay. And the Spirit and the bride say, come. The bride says, come. You see, you and I are supposed to share this with everybody. The idea that Christians get together, and we hunker down and wait for the kingdom to come. And that the preaching of the gospel is over, is a lie. Now, I don't know the preaching of the gospel, but maybe one person. I don't know. I'll go out in the street corner and do it to one person. I'll do it to the person who cuts my hair. I'll do it to the grocery store. Whenever I get a chance, you do what? You tell people about your, my bridegroom.

I want to tell people, I'm getting married. You want, you want to be part of it? You want to get married? You want to be part of this? Don't think that somehow the writers of the good news, or somehow, you know, Mr. McNeely, or myself, or Mr. Myers, you know, well, those guys get to do the television. They're just the preachers of the gospel. We're all the bride of Christ. You and I are to preach this every chance we get. I don't mean proselyte, but just by our sheer example. We're not supposed to hide. Are we ashamed of our, are we ashamed of our husband? Are you ashamed of your husband?

Or do you want to brag about him a little bit?

Come. The bride's supposed to say, come! Come be part of this. The moment we stop wanting other people to be part of this, that's the moment we begin to spiritually deteriorate into selfishness.

Be prepared, and be prepared to say, come. The fall Holy Days picture, the time when this marriage is going to take place, Christ is coming back for his bride. He's already paid the price. He's already prepared the place. You and I are now being prepared. This Holy Day season, rededicate yourself to God as your father, but also rededicate yourself to Jesus Christ as your husband. Let's become a help fit for him, obedient to him, loving him. Let's become a fit wife. Let's make ourselves ready with the help of Jesus Christ and God the Father, with the power of their spirit.