Behold, This is Our God!
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· 11 views1. At Christ’s wedding feast, he will totally satisfy his Bride the church. 2. Since Christ’s Bride waits for him, they will rejoice when he satisfies them. 3. Christ’s Bride will experience this satisfaction from Christ face to face.
Notes
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Introduction
Introduction
Good morning Lifegate, faculty, staff, and students!
Blessings to you in our Lord Jesus Christ.
What a joy to be with you this morning!
I count it a great honor to be able to walk with you through God’s word to point you to Christ.
Honestly, this is an incredibly humbling and awe-inspiring responsibility.
Pastor Phil has faithfully pointed you to the gospel time and time again.
My prayer is that I would continue to build upon the foundation that he and others have laid.
Please pray for me that each week the Lord would give me the words that would exalt Christ for your great joy and our Father’s great glory.
Having said that, let’s go ahead and open with a time of prayer this morning.
Let’s pray that the Lord would open our hearts, our minds, and our ears to what he would have for us.
Heavenly Father, we ask for guidance by your Holy Spirit this morning.
Please lead us and guide us.
Please make us sensitive to your Holy Spirit.
Lord, we need your work in our lives.
We ask for your mighty saving hand to be upon us today.
Thank you for hearing our prayers.
We ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Today, I came across an article entitled: “Micro-weddings & Minimonies.”
Apparently, a Micro-wedding is a wedding which is 50 people or less.
However, the bride and groom spend just as much money as if it were a large wedding.
A minimony on the other hand is a wedding ceremony involving just a handful of family and friends.
These minimonies are later to be followed by what’s called a “sequel wedding.”
This is a traditional wedding where everyone is invited.
Friends today we are going to be looking at a wedding.
Now I don’t want to disappoint you, this wedding is not a micro-wedding or a minimony.
This wedding will have the largest, grandest, most glorious wedding feast in the history of the world.
The wedding of Christ, the bridegroom, and his bride the church when he returns for her.
The title of our message this morning is “Behold, This is our God!”
If that phrase sounds familiar it is because it is from Is. 25:8-9 our Scripture memory passage this quarter.
This is the passage we are going to be studying this morning: Isaiah 25:8-9.
Since we are going to be memorizing it, how wonderful to hear God speak to us through it today.
So if you would please open your Bibles to Isaiah 25:8-9.
We are going to read it now, beginning at verse 6.
Beloved friends, this the Word of the Lord.
This has been breathed out by God and bears all his divine authority.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Today, from this passage we are going to discover three main points:
1. At Christ’s wedding feast, he will totally satisfy his Bride the church.
2. Since Christ’s Bride waits for him, they will rejoice when he satisfies them.
3. Christ’s Bride will experience this satisfaction from Christ face to face.
1. At Christ’s wedding feast, He will totally satisfy his Bride the church.
1. At Christ’s wedding feast, He will totally satisfy his Bride the church.
He will swallow up death, wipe away tears, and remove reproach.
In verse six, we see “a feast of rich food,”
But to understand this OT passage as a marriage feast, we have to know its NT fulfillment.
at the great marriage supper of the Lamb in Rev. 19 and 21.
Please turn with me to Rev. 19:7-16, where we see Christ the groom return for his wedding!
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
And then who appears in vs 11, Christ the Lamb who is the Groom.
Now let’s flip over to Rev. 21:2-4 where we see Christ’s Glorious Bride arriving from heaven
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
What significance does it have that this is at the wedding of Christ and the church?
The promises of Is. 25:6-7 are for the church.
These are for those who love and trust him not for unbelievers and the disobedient
Some people believe that God will swallow up death not just for the church but for everyone, that everyone in the universe who has ever lived will go to heaven.
Others believe God’s swallowing up of death means God causes the wicked to cease to exist.
Neither of these is the case.
Death is not swallowed up for unbelievers.
They do not go to heaven.
They do not cease to exist.
They experience eternal death separated from the presence of the Lord.
Isaiah 25:10 describes this eternal death as God’s trapping the wicked in a dung-hill out of which they cannot swim no matter how hard they try.
Jesus in Mark 9:48 describes hell for the wicked as follows:
‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
The worms never die, hell’s fire will never go out because unbelievers will always be there.
Why do I emphasize this? Because we all deserve this eternal dunghill, the worms and fire
That’s what we, all of us, in our sin deserves!
Yet God in his love sent his only begotten Son into the world to live as a perfect man to fulfill the law and bear all its curse.
Though without sin, Christ became sin on the cross and drank up all the wrath of God.
Those who look to Christ in faith and call upon him as Lord, they will be saved.
With his blood, he redeems for himself as a special possession all who call upon his name!
The Church belongs to him!
God promises the church to him in marriage.
In his body that died on the cross he swallowed up death for his church forever,
Because he shed his blood, he is able to wipe away all the tears we’ve shed.
In the reproach of his body on the cross, he took away all our shame, as Is. 25:8 prophesied, “The reproach of HIS people he will take away.”
Let’s look practically at how these promises apply to us as believers.
I want to introduce you to three Christian Teenages: Will whose Grandpa died, Julie who cries every day, and Johnny who has made a very foolish mistake.
What does it mean for Will that at Christ’s wedding, God will swallow up Death forever.
What does it mean for Will that at Christ’s wedding, God will swallow up Death forever.
Though Will wept and wept when his Grandpa died, Will we can and must grieve with hope.
Christ will return.
Will’s Grandpa will be raised to new life
Will will be caught up with them in the clouds to always be with the Lord
We will never fear death again
For Christ has total victory Over sin and the law
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
What does it mean for Julie that at Christ’s wedding, God will wipe away all our Tears
What does it mean for Julie that at Christ’s wedding, God will wipe away all our Tears
In part it means that one day she will never cry again!
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.
Julie will have such comfort- total satisfaction/joy in Christ that no memory of suffering
“For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
She’ll be rewarded for faith in the midst of her tears:
Luke 6:21 “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.”
What does it mean for Johnny, who sinned in a grievous manner, that God will take away all our Reproach
What does it mean for Johnny, who sinned in a grievous manner, that God will take away all our Reproach
Johnny need not pay anything to Christ for aright standing before God
He could never pay enough
He need drink deeper and deeper of Christ’s love and mercy and forgiveness
And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
If Johnny trusts in Jesus, then Christ bore all of Johnny’s guilt and shame on cross
Christ’s blood washes Johnny’s robes
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
Johnny can now obey the Lord in freedom not in an attempt to remove his shame.
We along with Johnny and Will and Julie can be confident, at Christ’s wedding feast, Christ will totally satisfy his Bride the church.
We along with Johnny and Will and Julie can be confident, at Christ’s wedding feast, Christ will totally satisfy his Bride the church.
As members of Christ’s church, Will and Julie and Johnny will be totally satisfied when Christ Returns.
No more death. No more Tears. No more Reproach.
2. Beloved, here is our second point, since Christ’s Bride waits for him, they will rejoice when he satisfies them.
2. Beloved, here is our second point, since Christ’s Bride waits for him, they will rejoice when he satisfies them.
We see two qualities of Christ’s people: (a) rest-filled waiting which leads to (b) rejoicing
2a. First let’s look at the source and character of rest-filled waiting in God’s promise
2a. First let’s look at the source and character of rest-filled waiting in God’s promise
At the end of verse 8, we see the source of Isaiah’s resting: “The Lord has spoken.”
God’s people rest in the Lord’s promises because “the Lord has spoken.”
Did you notice the circularity?
We rest in the Lord’s promises because they are the Lord’s promises
This circularity is intentional.
Only the Lord’s promises can produce our rest-filled waiting on these promises.
“The gospel is the power of salvation”
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
The Lord’s voice produces in his sheep rest-filled waiting upon what his voice promises.
in Is. 25:9, Christ’s people declare at his return: “We have waited for him.”
Because the Lord has spoken, we (along with Will and Julie and Johnny) can rest in the Lord’s promise and wait for him to come and totally satisfy us.
The Bride Rejoices when God saves them
The Bride Rejoices when God saves them
Let’s look at how Is. 25:8-9 ends
Christ’s Bride declares at his coming:
V.9 “Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Bride’s overflowing satisfaction
Want Wedding anxiety/sadness?
The Bride’s gladness and joy!
Why God planned the world:
Bride’s glorifying by enjoying Christ
Isn’t it amazing!
God not only desires our joy!
But planned the world for it!
Jesus’ final message before cross:
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
God does not want partial but full joy!
How? Abiding in Christ’s love 4 us!
Loving others like Christ loves
Christians like Will, Julie and Johnny can know
The purpose for death, suffering, sin:
When Christ returns after their waiting
V.9 “Let us be glad
and rejoice in his salvation.”
We can begin to experience this joy now.
Like a bride longing for her groom.
We can experience his joy/love now
3. Christ’s Bride will experience satisfaction from Christ face to face.
3. Christ’s Bride will experience satisfaction from Christ face to face.
The Bride will see Him.
He will be theirs, and they will be his.
The great Finale for Christ’s people
Will see God in Christ face to face
Twice in vs 9
“Behold, this is our God;”
“This is the Lord”
We will be his
He will be ours
Fulfillment of God’s covenantal purposes:
I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
What does this mean?
Worship,
Experience,
Identity in him
No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
How is it possible?
We’ll be transformed
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
In Matthew, Jesus says as bright as stars
Jesus to the Father says:
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
He promised his hand in marriage
The church is betrothed to him
God did not just send Christ to be king
Christ in eternity is already king of eternity
God sent Christ to win the church bride
Our overwhelming joy
through our union w/ Christ
On the cross, Christ won us to himself
Waiting for our Royal Wedding
And all the wedding gifts!
1. When Christ returns, God will end these three things for Christ’s Bride the church: death, tears, and reproach.
2. Christ’s people rest in the promise of God’s salvation and rejoice when God saves them.
3. Christ’s people will see God face to face, for he is there’s, and they are his.
Let’s pray