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Transcript: Welcome to "5 Minutes with Pastor Lutzer." I'm so glad that you joined us again today as we have this study, entitled, "The King Is Coming." Now, if you've been with us before, you know that we emphasized the rapture of the church and then the Judgment Seat of Jesus Christ, to which all believers will appear. And today, we're going to talk about the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Now, if I were to do this actually in chronological order, I'd put off a discussion of the marriage supper because it's very clear from Revelation 19 that it occurs after the tribulation period but we're going to discuss it today because I'm going to be talking about the blessing to us as believers, and then in a couple of episodes we're going to be talking about the Great Tribulation. But stay with me.
Revelation 19—the Bible says, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns." And then it says, "Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage supper of the Lamb has come, and behold His bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure." And then, perhaps surprisingly, to us: "For the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints." We're going to have something to exult and rejoice in at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Now in order for us to understand this we must remind ourselves of Jewish customs. There was a time in this whole sequence when the couple was betrothed, we would call it "engaged," and once that engagement took place it was almost equivalent to marriage. And oftentimes it was a long period of time. This gave the bride and groom the opportunity to test one another to make sure that they would be true to each other, that they would not wander off to some other lover. During this period of time also the groom had two responsibilities.
One would be he would pay a dowry to the bride's family. Now Jesus paid our dowry. The Bible says that He shed His precious blood on behalf of the church. The payment was made to God the Father. What does it say in Revelation 5? He has redeemed for God people from every nation, tongue and so forth. That's why there is no such thing here as the making of a vow because the covenant has already been sealed. That has already taken place when Jesus Christ paid the dowry.
Something else that the groom did was he would spend his time building a home for his bride before he would come and get her. Think of the words of Jesus to the disciples: "I go to prepare a place for you 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 be also." And, of course, then when the time arrived the groom came for the bride and that's what we were talking about as we began this series speaking about the rapture of the church, the coming of Jesus for His people, for the church. And what we must understand during this period of time is that Jesus is the one who is going to receive the attention at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ.
Now we have to hurry it says, "The bride has made herself ready (that's us) with linen bright and pure, which is the righteous deeds of the saints." You really need two garments to enter into heaven: you need the righteousness of Jesus Christ applied to you, that's true white linen, but also the deeds that we have done. If you are with us last time, you know that we talked about the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. So you know "the gold, the silver, the precious stones," all of that now factors into the fact that we have something to wear, namely the linen that represents the righteous deeds of the saints.
Well, time is really hurrying along here and I have to pose a question to you. You'll notice it's says, "Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding." Wait a moment. Who are these invited guests? You say, well it's the bride of Christ. No. The bride is never invited to a wedding. The bride is the one who sends out the invitations. There's some special guests that arrived here. It says blessed are those who are invited to the wedding. Who are they? Well that's what we're going to talk about next time. Now this is so critical that I want you to subscribe to "5 Minutes with Pastor Lutzer." In addition, of course, you can hit like and we're always encouraged when you pass it along. Hit share because next time I'm going to be talking about something that will be, to some extent, perhaps, lighthearted but also I think will bring us to tears. The marriage supper of the Lamb, sobering, beautiful, but as for today, you just go with God.