The Coming Hope: The Coming Feast

Welcome new people into our church. If you fill out your information, you'll be invited by a staff member for a cup of coffee and we want to welcome you into our fellowship. We also want to use this as a way of helping people learn each other's names. So if you take a moment to do that, I want to invite two of our deacons to come forward at this moment. If Lee Robinson and Mark Best could come on up, we are really grateful for these guys today.

We're doing an Advent series looking at hope—the coming hope. We're looking backward toward the first advent, the first coming of Jesus, and forward to the second coming of Jesus because as Christians, our hope is not hopes, it is hope singular. It's hope who came as a baby the first time and our hope that is coming again.

So we're going to look today at Revelation chapter 19 and then at 22. Short reading—if you will also join your voices with me as we read God's word aloud together.

Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters, and like the rumbling of loud thunder, saying, Hallelujah, because our Lord God, the Almighty reigns. Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself. She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure, for the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, "Write, blessed are those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb." He also said to me, "These words of God are true. Both the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' Let anyone who hears say, 'Come.' Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely." — Revelation 19:6-9

Human beings, we run on hope just like cars run on gasoline and plants run on sunlight. Hope is what carries us through really difficult circumstances in our lives and we really can't exist long without hope.

Now, I want to ask you to play imagine with me for a moment. Imagine two people have been contracted for the same job working in a warehouse for the next year and their job is to take part A and screw it in to part B. That's their entire job. Six days a week, eight hours a day. One person is promised $10,000,000 at the end of the year. The other person is promised minimum wage with no benefits.

So here's what their conversation is like every day in the break room. The person who's been promised minimum wage is like, "Ugh, this job, it's so boring. It's excruciating. I'm dying doing this." The other person who's been promised $10,000,000 is like, "You know, I don't find it to be so bad. I'm actually kind of enjoying having the headspace to think. It's pretty good for me."

Now, what is the difference between those two people? It's their expectation. What they are to receive informs how they endure or walk through their present. People of God, what it means to be Christian is that we have $10,000,000 hopes and we live in a minimum wage world. That's what it's like.

The Book of Revelation is the end of the Bible in many ways—the last book and it's about the last things—but it's also about the finish. The word in Greek is telos, which means culmination, right? All the culmination of all our hopes and longings and desires, all the loose threads of this life come together in a glorious ending that not only makes sense but makes meaning out of life in the present.

As we look at this book together and we finish up this sermon, which is the last in our coming hope series, we're going to look today at the heavenly marriage—Jesus with his church. And as we do so, you need to understand a little bit of Jewish background of how a wedding worked because it has this element of longing and hope and expectation.

Jewish Wedding Tradition

A first century Jewish wedding had three parts. And if you read Jesus's parables about weddings, you'll see this laid out.

The first is the betrothal where a bride and a groom give each other promises that they will be married. This is as binding as a marriage and yet it isn't the marriage—it's not the wedding itself. From that point, the groom disappears for an indeterminate amount of time, however long it takes him to go back to mom and dad's house and begin a construction project. Literally, a construction project. The groom would build an extra room onto mom and dad's house where he and his future wife would go and live together. That could take months, that could take up to a year. Nobody knows when the groom is coming back, but the groom appears unannounced, usually at night, and takes his wife and escorts her. There are people who follow with him—the wedding party follows to mom and dad's house where the wedding takes place and then begins a week-long party.

A week long celebration with feasting and people take a week off of work to come and celebrate the new couple. That's the background of a Jewish wedding feast. Now, this is very much built into what we're reading this morning because what has happened in the coming of Jesus as a baby is in a sense his betrothal to us. In his betrothal, he's making these glorious promises: I am yours and you're mine. And then he goes away. The church has been waiting a long time for our groom to come back, and what did he say to us when he left? "I'm going to go prepare a place for you, right?" He's going to return, but we are weary in the waiting. We're tired. We're struggling for hope.

So this morning, we are going to look again at this wedding because this isn't just Jesus's wedding—this is our wedding. I want you to look at this with me and think about this as a modern wedding: the reception, the groom, the bride, and then the invitation. Let's look at this together, and before I do so, I just want to say one thing for those of you who are not married or who used to be married or are unhappily married or wish that you were married.

A Word on Singleness

The Bible doesn't hold up marriage—contrary to what you might experience in the Southern Bible Belt Church—as the ultimate. The Bible actually holds up the single life as the ultimate status, or the most ability to be faithful to the Lord in this life. Sometimes that's confusing to us in the way that the church operates, but I want to tell you: if you aren't married or if you aren't happily married or if you used to be married or if you wish you were married, you may actually have an easier time entering into this passage than those who are happily married. Sometimes people who are happily married really balk at the fact that there is no wedding and no marriage with our earthly spouses in eternity. That feels like a loss, and so you actually have a leg up on some others of us.

The Reception

Let's start with this: the reception. Now, I know sometimes people refer to what we saw here about a feast as the wedding supper of the lamb, and if you're a good southerner, you know that supper is just a little bitty meal, right? Like supper is cucumber sandwiches. Supper is a hot dog, right? I don't want you to think supper. I want you to think dinner, right? Like dinner is steak and potatoes and mushrooms and a big salad and all the stuff. And that's more of what's in view.

When we think of the marriage supper of the lamb, it's really a feast. It's really dinner. The new Jerusalem, if you're a Christian, your future home is a feast. It is a place of unrivaled beauty and pleasure. And I know what happens when we think about God and pleasure. Pleasure? What does God know about pleasure? We hear words from scripture like this:

In your right hand are pleasures forevermore — Psalm 16:11

And people kind of inwardly nod in a cynical way. But that's formed by mistaken views of the afterlife. Christianity presents us not with a one-part view of what is to come after we die—heaven or hell—but a two-part view: heaven or hell, which is an intermediate state, and then when Jesus comes, he will usher in the new Jerusalem, the new heavens, and the new earth.

One writer, Peter Kreeft, says:

No one longs for fluffy clouds and asexual cherubs. No one longs for the heavens that we've imagined. But everyone longs for something no eye has seen, no ear has heard, something no one has ever entered into the imagination of men—something God has prepared for those who love him.

The new heavens and the new earth is not a disembodied state. That's the intermediate state—that's heaven, that's hell. But with the coming again of Jesus comes a new reuniting with physical bodies, a new physicality, and a new life together in the new heavens and new earth. This is why it's a feast. It's a physical feast. It is pleasure.

We sing this in our church:

Solid joys and lasting pleasures, none but Zion's children know.

Eternity for Christians is a pleasure feast that goes on forever. Why is it so hard for us to think that God knows anything about pleasure? Who designed your taste buds? Who designed sexuality? Who designed beauty? Why are you moved by music? Why do you love to dance? These things are created by God, and they have no utilitarian value at all. They're just gifts. They're gifts of a God who loves pleasure and loves to give pleasure.

Actually, it's we, not God, who don't know much about pleasure or feasting. We live in a fast food world. We live in a diet world. We are counting calories and cutting carbs and always worried about our weight. We're always limiting and skimping and being careful. Eternity is a feast.

Eternity is a party and Isaiah 25, which is a background passage of this, gives us more vivid pictures and details of what this feast looks like. And it neatly parallels what we read here in Revelation 19. It says this:

On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, the finest of wines. On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all people, the sheet that covers the nations. He will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove his people's disgrace from all the earth. The Lord God has spoken. — Isaiah 25

If eternity is real, if what we're speaking of is true, the eternal city, the new Jerusalem is not a low calorie place at all. It's a place of feasting.

The Sign of the Wedding Feast

Jesus's first ever miracle in John chapter two was a miracle at a wedding feast at Cana. What's fascinating about this is that the Bible never uses the word miracle the way we use it. Particularly in John's gospel, the word there is "sign." These miraculous signs were meant to be like every sign on the highway—you read off of that something about what Jesus's kingdom is supposed to be like.

Now, Jesus shows up and does this miracle, and it's a surprising miracle. One, because not many people at this wedding know about it. It's only the people serving and making sure there's enough to drink that know about this at first. The other is that it's such an abundant miracle. It's such a ridiculous miracle. Jesus doesn't show up and make utility wine—just barely getting by. And he doesn't make just a little bit to carry them forward. He has them fill up four jars that are thirty gallons each. Do you realize how much wine that is? 120 gallons of wine. That is a lot of wine.

It's a picture for us. Can you read the sign coming off of this? It's a sign of joy. Over and over, it's a sign of joy. This is wine that these people could never have afforded in a quantity they could not have known, of a quality they could not have known, at a time in the feast when people are serving the cheap stuff because people have already had some. Jesus brings out the best for last. That's what it says. This is what the sign of wine is—joy, high quality, over abundant joy. This is the picture of the coming wedding feast. High quality, over abundant joy.

The Crane and the Swan

Here's why that matters. Dwight Moody used to tell this story: the story of the crane and the swan.

One day, there's a crane in the lake looking for snails, dipping its head in the water hunting for snails. A beautiful swan flies down and lights on the beach right next to the crane. The crane is taken by this beauty, this wonder of this creature and says, "Who are you?"

The swan says, "Well, I'm a swan. Where did you come from?" "I came from heaven." "What's it like there?" "Heaven, have you never heard of heaven?"

The beautiful swan goes on to describe the beauty of what's to come: the celestial city. She tells of streets of gold, gates and walls made of precious stone, the river of life, purest crystal, upon whose banks is the tree of whose leaves shall be for the healing of nations. In eloquent terms, the swan goes on and on about the physicality and the joy of the new heavens and new earth.

Finally, the crane says, "Well, that sounds good but are there any snails there?"

"Snails?" said the swan. "Of course, there aren't snails there. There's so much better."

Then, said the crane, putting her head back into the water, "You can have your heaven. I want my snails."

It's a lie. It's a fabrication. It's a deception that goes back to the Garden of Eden—that God knows nothing of pleasure, that he's always holding out on his people, that pleasure is what you create and you have to go get for yourself.

The FOMO Trap

In this life, I find that so many of us are drowning in FOMO, drowning in fear of missing out. We look around and it seems like everyone else is having a better life than you are. Everybody else is having a feast. Everyone else is going on incredible vacations. Everyone else looks really happy. And you think, "Why? Why do I do this Christian thing?" You feel like you've wasted your money, wasted your sacrifices, wasted your time. You've given up a life that you could've had with somebody who would have been really fun. And you think like, "This has all been for nothing."

And that's as silly as saying, "I wish I had my snails."

In the new heavens and new earth, as we sit around the table and raise our joy glasses with Jesus, that will overflow. All those doubts, all that FOMO, all that will evaporate. It's not going to matter. You know, all the sacrifices that you've made for Jesus, all the obedience when it didn't make sense, all the being faithful to Him when it cost you something and didn't result in immediate pleasure for you—it will matter. And at that feast, that's going to be what lasts. Lasting joys, eternal pleasures, none but Zion's children know.

The Groom

Second, let's look at the groom. This is the image God wants cemented in our brains in this passage. God wants a heavenly marriage with you, with His people. I mean, it's fascinating that God doesn't describe His language with us—this is throughout the Bible—not in terms of employer-employee, right? Not in terms of teacher or student or coach and player or master and servant, but groom and bride. And that's a picture for us that has three dimensions to it.

One is in saying, God is saying: this is what our relationship is. I want a relationship with you that's husband and wife. I want a relationship that's permanent. You know, what do we ask in the vows between a bride and a groom? Till death do us part. This is a happily ever after—not till death do us part, but beyond death and into eternity and eternity and eternity. This is what God wants with us.

In defining our relationship with Him in terms of a marriage, God is saying, I want a relationship with you that is comprehensive. It's every area of life. When a bride and groom form a life together in this life, they join a name and a bank account and an address and everything. It's all shared. And then when God defines our relationship with Him this way, He's saying, I want a relationship with you that is comprehensive but also intimate. You know, as much as many of you who are parents love your children, those are relationships where you receive for a time in order to send them out. We don't hold on to our kids. But the Bible says we cling to our spouses. That's what the language is. Only in marriage is there such incredible intimacy and vulnerability. This is what God wants with us.

You know, this wedding we read in the book of Revelation here is all about the groom. Yeah, I just did a wedding on Friday. They're here, and as I did their wedding, this is what I always instruct people in the wedding party: you always look at the bride, right? You always—if you need to know where you stand, you're in the wedding party—you always face the bride. Wherever the bride is, that's where you're looking. It's all about the bride. What do we hear under our breaths when you hear it? "Here comes the bride." Not this wedding. This wedding is all about the groom. It's all about him. It's all about his love for his people. He's the big deal. We might as well be humming "Here comes the groom" under our breaths, because it is his love that makes this wedding a wedding.

I want you to see this. The identity that John underlines for us of who this groom is—is very specific. And he could've used lots of titles here for Jesus. He could've said the King of Kings is the groom. He could've said the Lord of Lords is the groom. He could've said the Anointed One, the Creator, the Messiah, the Holy One, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. What does he say? Who's the groom? The Lamb. The Lamb.

Why highlight the Lamb? The Lamb highlights one particular aspect of Christ's work for His people—which is His incredible sacrifice. His laying down His life for His people. Him being killed. His going to the cross for us. This is what's held out for us. This is His love for lost sinners. It's His in-your-placeness that's being held out for you. This is what makes the groom the groom. And without this groom, there's no wedding.

Which leads me to a question: If you could have everything—if you could have everything that this life has to offer, right? If you could have the full bank account and the person who really gets you and really great friends and all the health and all the goodness but without the groom, would you want it? You know, if you could have eternity with all the joys and all the comforts and all the people you love the most but without the groom, would you want it? See, the groom is the big deal. The groom is what makes the marriage the marriage. This is what makes heaven heaven. He is there. This is what is so compelling for Christians about a vision of life after life after death—is that He is there. The big H: He is there. You know, why is heaven heaven? Because the groom is there.

Let's think about the bride too. By contrast, the bride is a mess.

The bride is the church of Jesus Christ, his people, and it doesn't take a whole lot of spiritual discernment to see that the bride of Christ is a disaster. A friend of mine used to say it this way: the bride of Christ always has a torn dress and a black eye. The rest of the world looks at the church and says, "Really? The church?" It's really popular right now to bash the church. Everyone seems cynical about the church except for one—the groom. Jesus is not cynical about the church. He's got open eyes to the problems of the church, but he looks at the church with groom eyes.

One of the reasons I love to do weddings is I get the best seat in the house. I get to turn and watch the groom's eyes on this guy right here as she comes down the aisle. And there's something incredible about that. It's a snapshot for me personally of how God sees us. He adores his bride.

Did you hear these words?

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. — Revelation 21:3

Isn't this the hardest part for many of us to imagine? Face to face with Jesus in eternity. Let's be honest. For some of us, that's downright frightening or really undesirable.

Maybe that's undesirable for you because you feel so much shame. You don't actually believe that God could adore you. You feel like what I described the bride to be—a mess, torn dress, black eye. For some of us, this feels scary, being known in that way. For some of us, it's hard because we don't really believe that being with God is the fountain of all joy. So all these statements we read in the Bible sound really weird to us.

Paul writes:

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. — Philippians 1:23

And this is what we say under our breaths: My desire is to be here, for that's far better. Not with Christ.

Or Paul says:

To live is Christ, to die is gain. — Philippians 1:21

We're like, "To die feels like ultimate loss."

Or the Psalmist says:

Your love is better than life. — Psalm 63:3

We're like, "No. A great family and health and a full bank account—that's what feels like the good life. That's better than eternal life." A lot of the Bible doesn't make sense to us because we haven't really immersed ourselves in who our King is.

The Game of Sardines

When I was a kid, I grew up in one of those neighborhoods in this little town in East Tennessee where it's still safe to play after dark outside. All these kids in my neighborhood played two games: hide and seek and sardines.

Hide and seek is when everybody hides and one person has to go and find them. Sardines is sort of the opposite game. One person hides and everybody goes to find them. When you find them, you hunker down and hide with that person.

I think in this life, all of us are playing sardines. We're designed with a desire to be known and to be cherished and to be understood and to be wanted and to be accepted. Everybody out there is playing this game of sardines. "I want to find my special someone, and when I find them, I'm going to be with them." That's what we're looking for in this life. But the reality is, even in the happiest marriages, there's always loneliness. There's always distance. You are tied with vows to another sinner who, even on their best days, doesn't really totally get you.

Even our "someones" aren't as special as we think they should be able to be. If the stats and the stories are true, we are inhabiting a loneliness pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, these were the headlines:

"Surgeon General Says There's a Loneliness Epidemic"—Washington Post. "Young People Report More Loneliness Than the Elderly"—USA Today. "The Biggest Threat Facing Middle-Aged Men Isn't Smoking or Obesity, It's Loneliness"—Boston Globe. "The Surprising Effect of Loneliness on Health"—New York Times. "Loneliness Begets More Loneliness"—The Atlantic. "How Social Isolation Is Killing Us"—New York Times. "Social Isolation Kills More People Than Obesity"—Slate Magazine.

All of those are pre-pandemic. I can't imagine what's happened to that infection because it has only multiplied over the last three years.

Which means that it's probably the case that every person in this room is fighting a daily overwhelming battle with loneliness. All of us. And it means also one other thing: our game of sardines isn't working very well. Our longing to be deeply known and completely accepted and truly loved—no matter what all the love songs say—it's just not working.

This is the good news of the heavenly wedding. While we're all playing sardines in this life, God is playing hide and seek. We all hide from him. We're all running and hiding from him. But this is what the love of Jesus is like: to be found, to be known, to be truly known all the way down. This heavenly wedding gives us a picture of an eternity of intimacy and being known and understood that is frankly hard for us to imagine. It's that good.

The Bible challenges our immature ideas of God. In 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, we read this:

Now we see but through a mirror dimly. Then, in the new Jerusalem, we shall see face to face. Now, I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I'm fully known. — 1 Corinthians 13:12

The new Jerusalem is a promise of a quality of intimacy with God, of knowing and being known, that so surpasses anything that you can experience in this life that it makes the most fulfilling of marriages look like puppy love. If we really understood it, it would take our breath away over and over and over.

You want to know the biggest challenge of your life? Learning to be loved by God this way. That's the biggest challenge facing the church: to actually believe that God really loves his people, that he adores his bride.

There are a lot of questions about who wrote the Book of Revelation. I think it's the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. And John identifies himself in that gospel in a very peculiar way. He identifies himself over and over as the one that Jesus loved—the beloved disciple. He got it. There's something about that which John got that I'm trying to get, and I hope you're trying to get. What would it look like for us to identify ourselves that way? The beloved of God, the one that Jesus loves. This is the big challenge for the church.

We think we have a lot of other challenges, but this is really it. If we really believed how much our heavenly Father adores his bride—and he is not just barely putting up with you. He longs for you. He longs to spend eternity with you. He can't wait. If we could get that through our heads, everything else would work its way out.

The Invitation

Here's the invitation. This passage ends with an invitation, and it's one of seven invitations in the book of Revelation—actually number four—and it goes like this:

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. — Revelation 19:9

Remember that Revelation was written to a congregation just like this, and probably just like our congregation. We always expect that there are unbelievers here with us every Sunday—people who are like, "I don't know about this." People who used to believe this stuff. People who are in some process with that. But like that congregation and our congregation, this invitation is given. And every time this invitation is given, this is what it says: it's a blessing just to hear it. You're invited. You're invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.

But remember what that means. This is not the invitation that comes in the mail with the options: chicken, steak, or vegan, and who's your plus one? You're not being invited to attend a wedding that's not yours. You're invited to come to your wedding. You're invited to come and be the bride. That's what's being offered to us.

Would you come? Would you please show up?

For those of you who aren't Christians, here's my call: Would you allow God to love you like this? Would you allow God to love you? Would you allow yourself to understand God's love? It's that comprehensive. He knows you as you are, and he loves you as you are. He's got to change you. He's got an agenda for you. But he loves you comprehensively.

Of course, you aren't as you ought to be. None of us are as we ought to be, and none of us will be until we're in the new Jerusalem with him, when his love has perfected us. His love is that comprehensive. His love is that permanent. It's not just "till death do we part," but beyond death. And it's that intimate. "I know you and I love you."

Jesus loves beyond all worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity. He loves you when your intellect refuses to believe it and your emotions don't reflect it. He loves you when your whole being rejects it. This is the love of God in Christ. It's that good.

And that's the invitation. The RSVP to this is to say yes. "I want Jesus." It's that simple. Really, it is that simple.

It's to say, I want to know that kind of love. And for you who are Christians, the call of the wedding that's always held out over and over in the gospels is: go get ready. Get ready. He's gone. He's coming back and just like it says here in verse seven, the bride has made herself ready.

I love how the rock band U2 sings about eternity with God. They sing this: "Laughter is eternity if joy is real." That's exactly right, and that's from their song "Get On Your Boots." Church, get on your boots. Get ready. Don't be weary in the waiting.

I know it is so easy to lose hope. I know it's so easy to say, he will return sometime, I guess. But focus your eyes on what's to come. Refuel your hopes. Remember your groom, your king.

The True Nature of the Bride

Me close with this. Do you remember that all the best fairy tales are actually true? Remember Beauty and the Beast? The Beast who has been transformed into a hideous creature and it is the love of this woman that will actually transform him back.

In this life, all of us feel much more like beast than beauty. All of us. And we will look at ourselves and we look at the church, our response is always to see the ugliness and the rudeness of the bride of Christ. But Jesus adores his bride. He looks at us with groom eyes. He will return and we will be transformed and what he has seen all along and knows is going on on the inside, all that will be revealed on the outside. Like the hideous beast, we will be revealed in glory.

Dear children, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. — 1 John 3

Hold on to hope, friends. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer

Let's pray together. Lord, this is a little too big for me to preach and I know it's a little too hard to hear. Father, we pray that you would increase our faith today. We pray for any who don't know you, who don't know you as this kind of God who loves this way. Father, we pray that you would raise hopes again out of cynicism, that we can be that known and that loved and that understood.

I pray for those who are here who are Christians, who are weary in the waiting. Lord, would you revive our hearts and strengthen our desires and our longings. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song together. Would you stand with me?