Let's go to the Lord one more time in prayer together. Lord, we thank you so much for your word and for your heart, for your people. We thank you that you've given us your word and prayer. You've given us songs to sing. You've given us fellowship. as a means to an end, which is communion with you, enjoying you. Lord, we ask that by your Spirit you would cause us to commune with your Son. We ask that Jesus and all his splendor and glory would be real to us. Lord, manifest yourself to us. Lay us low. We ask that we would fall deeper in love with him. We ask that we would be given more over to him and offer ourselves to him. For your namesake and for your glory, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 19, verse 7. As you turn there, let me ask you a question. What makes heaven heaven? What makes heaven heaven to you? Is it eternal life? Gates of pearl and roads paved with gold? How about the absence of pain or reconciling with loved ones? The prospect of rest, pure uninterrupted rest that will go on for an eternity surrounded by the ones you love. Maybe you've heard the so-called testimonies of those who have been to heaven and back, guys like Don Piper in his book, 90 Minutes in Heaven, or the very popular book, Heaven is for Real. To them, heaven is about sitting in Jesus' lap while angels sing to you, or hearing a majestic choir, seeing colors that don't exist on earth. Friends, What's heaven to you? What makes heaven heaven to you? The Bible certainly defines heaven in different terms. The writers frequently term it as and describe it as being with Christ. Jesus tells the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. Paul says to be with Christ is best. Jesus in his prayer in John 17 prays that he desires that we Christians would be with him. In John 17, 24. It's about Christ. Heaven isn't heaven without him. And in the consummation of all things, when sin is finally judged, we, you and I, will be presented to Christ as his bride. God presented a bride to the first Adam, and he will present a spotless, prepared bride to the second Adam. What's heaven, brothers and sisters? Well, what's the function of your marriage? An end in itself? No, but to point to your upcoming spiritual wedding day. Let's read Revelation 19, 7 together. Let's actually begin. A few verses back, rather one verse back in verse six, we'll read to verse nine for the sake of context. This is John speaking. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. 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. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. Believer, your Savior is your betrothed and will soon be your husband, and the spiritual ecstasies you will share will make the highest joys of your earthly marriage seem completely dull and drab in comparison. Though you have been faithless, He will be faithful to have you presented to Him. Delight yourselves in the future glories of your spiritual marriage. Think on these things. Rejoice and exult even now. Together, let's devotionally look at this idea of being married to Christ by tracking the story of our marriage to Christ. Firstly, your marriage to Christ, the beginning. It begins in a way unlike any other love story in eternity past. You weren't there. You weren't a willing party. God the Father and God the Son, Titus 1-2 tells us, make a pact. They agree upon something. Before the beginning of time, They announce, they promise, they engage themselves to save a particular group of ruined sinners. God the Father sets an eye of love on you from eternity past. And he chooses you, if you're a Christian, in his Son that you might be before him, Ephesians 1.4. This wasn't an arbitrary choice. He didn't just choose you for no reason. The reasons mysterious and hidden to us. But he loves you as he loved his people Israel and Deuteronomy 7. He loved them because he loved them. He chose you because he willed it. He sets his sight of love on you from eternity past. And so God the Father and God the Son design to bring home a bride, a people to be with his son. Yet our triune God had to overcome some obstacles and our bridegroom set his face like flint to conquer them. You and I were rebellious sinners. You weren't lovely. You weren't appealing to him. You were doomed under the curse of the law for breaking it. God's justice demands satisfaction and so the full weight of his wrath must fall upon us. But Jesus, so filled with love for his bride, takes the full brunt of justice on their behalf. The flaming sword falls on him. He becomes a curse for the accursed and he drinks the full cup of God's wrath due them. He rescues them from the curse of the law. But then we hated him. We weren't just unlovable. We were totally incapable of love towards this pursuing bridegroom. We hated him and his holy ways. And thus Jesus receives, Acts 2 tells us, the Spirit in heaven and pours him out on his people. He takes their hearts of stone and gives his bride a heart of flesh. They're able to see him as lovely, Beautiful, worthy of worship, and sweet to follow. They walk with Him in obedience. Such as Jesus' pursuit of Gomer-like spouses. Look at His determination. He was and is unstoppable. But second, your marriage to Christ. Presently, your betrothal. You're redeemed. Yet Jesus, like anyone deeply in love with his spouse, can't be silent. And could you be silent when you were courting or engaged or dating your spouse? In John 14, 21, Jesus says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. God desires that we should even now know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, and that Christ would dwell in our hearts by faith. He's poured out His love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. His love is so strong it will not wait for the wedding supper. It breaks in on us now through the Word, through prayer, through the means of grace. But what's our experience of this love, this breaking in? We love Him but with a weak love, with a wavering love. We know in part, 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, we have a dim sight of Christ through a mirror dimly because of our sin. We wander and waver to our shame. Thankfully, brothers and sisters, this is not it. This isn't the consummation. So thirdly, we look at our marriage to Christ, the consummation. We see this in Revelation 19, what we just read together. Babylon has fallen in Revelation 18. All the fleshly desires and pleasures of this world are cast away. Those who drink of her pleasures are cast out with her, drinking the cup of God's wrath for eternity. There isn't the remotest possibility of mixing the two joys, those base sinful joys and heavenly pure joys anymore. False joy and purity is eternally destroyed. Babylon falls, but God's bride is presented before Christ and they're granted garments by God. You see that in verse 8. They've also made themselves ready, in verse 7, through a life of holiness. And this is the wedding day, a time of rejoicing and exulting. Every bit of wavering and wandering is turned away. No more distraction, no more personal sins and failings interrupting her fellowship with her bridegroom. The spouse, the bride is made perfect. And this is a day of spiritual indulgence. uninterrupted pure intimacy and fellowship. Jesus ravishes his spouse spiritually for all eternity and his bride returns that love in pure intimacy and closeness. We mentioned previously from 1st Corinthians 13.9 that because of our sin and the effects of the fall we know in part but then 1st Corinthians 13.12 Paul says, now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known. The first Adam and Eve, they knew each other, the Bible tells us, and we will experience something far deeper, far greater, far more ecstatic than that earthly marriage, that earthly knowledge. In our spiritual marriage, we will know Jesus intimately, Christ, our spiritual husband, will open himself to us and we will know him and see him as he is. You and I will see his glory, first of all. Jesus' pressing demand for his spouse when he was on earth was this, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory. It's John 17, 24. And on your marriage day, Christian, Jesus will manifest his glory to you for all eternity. Your quest here for a thrill, for awe, will find its fulfillment here. Jesus will put on display his holiness, his power and beauty, and he will cause you to drink from the river of his pleasures. Right now, such a sight would undo you in your sinfulness. Your frame, your bodily constitution wouldn't be able to handle this. Think about Isaiah in Isaiah 6. One sight of Christ's holiness and he's a goner. His sinful soul, his body couldn't take it. Woe is me, he says, I'm undone. But then 1 John 3, 2 tells us when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. We'll be strengthened, we'll be transformed, we'll be given new bodies, a new frame, sinlessness to see His glory, to see Him as He really is. He'll be known by you, His bride, and He'll pull back the curtain. He'll display His full splendor to be savored by you for all eternity. This Christ of intense glory is the God who is love. Part of that manifesting of His glory is the manifestation of His everlasting, unending love to you, His spouse. Again, we experience this on earth, do we not? Experientially, but weakly. Like experiencing His holiness, our frames can't bear the knowledge, the full knowledge of His love experientially for us. It makes me think of a couple people, a few people in church history. One, D.L. Moody, who had been praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and God gave him this experience of Himself and of His love for him subjectively. And Moody had to ask God to stay his hand lest the experience of His love would kill him. If you think that's relegated just to a kind of fanatic person, think of a Puritan like John Flavel, who after meditating on the Word and on Christ, while riding horseback, was completely overcome by the love of Christ, and people thought for three hours he had actually died, because he was so overcome with that experience. It testified that he hadn't experienced anything that heavenly before in his life. Even think of Amy Carmichael, who ran an orphanage, oversaw many little children, one of them who was sick and near death, got up, sprang up before she died and danced and just rejoiced audibly before her death as she was beginning to taste the fountain of life and then died. Friends, if we're to experience the might and the magnitude of this love, our bodies won't be able to do it. But the bride is strengthened, again, as 1 John 3 says, to swallow up the ecstasy, the height and depth of His great love for them. Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that we might know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. We're strengthened to experience it there. It will take an eternity to know. It's beyond knowledge. Our sins now partially deafen our ears from hearing His Zephaniah 3.17 rejoicing over us with singing, but then we'll hear His exultant love song with perfect clarity. Isaiah 43.1 will be experienced with power on that day. You will hear and know God's words, you are mine. Our journey for the rapturous ecstasies of love will have met its destination. The highest joys of millions of happy marriages will be but a drop in the bucket compared to this. Not a single distraction, no moderation, no need for self-control, full satisfaction from His glory and His love. So brothers and sisters, maybe you yourselves have heard a phrase like this, I think it originates with J.C. Ryle in the book Holiness, but something like, if you're not experiencing holiness here, if you're not chasing after holiness here, if you aren't holy here, heaven will be a nuisance, it'll be alien, it'll be foreign to you, not a home. But why not communion with God? Friends, prepare yourself for this wedding feast. Give yourself to feasting on Christ's delights even here. Engage in Bible reading and praying, listening to sermons with this and intimate fellowship with Christ. Do you desire the things we've talked about tonight? Are you experiencing now anything of the reality of His glory and love for you in your soul subjectively? Or is fellowship and enjoyment with Christ experiencing blockage? Say what an old Scottish pastor from the 1600s said to the Lord repeatedly, which was, Lord let nothing get in the way of my communion with you. So smash every idol, brothers and sisters, away with any competitor. When was the last time you examined yourself to see if there's anything blocking the channel of communion? between you and Christ. Anything that gets in the way of communion with your bridegroom must be subordinated. Part with your weight tonight. Prepare yourselves for this feast. Friends, on this side of eternity, be self-controlled about everything except this. Determine within yourselves that you will enjoy as much of Christ's presence and nearness as you can on this side of eternity, and prepare yourselves for this wedding feast. Every time you're eyeing an extra piece of chocolate or cookie or whatever, say to yourself, well, there's one thing I don't have to be moderate about, and that's communion with Christ. And you will do that here, and you will experience it perfectly, that wedding supper of the Lamb. So brothers and sisters, prepare for that wedding supper by communing with Christ now and feasting on Him, long for it, and God will use it in your walk in killing sin and loving holiness. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the reality that we will experience the ecstasies and the beauties and the majesty of your glory when we are presented to you. And we thank you for giving us marriage as a picture of our fellowship and communion with you. Yes, Lord, of self-sacrifice and love, but Lord, ultimately, fellowship with you, and intimacy with you, and joy in you, and feeding on you, and knowing you fully, even as we are known. Would we ask that we would continue to ready and prepare ourselves and keep ourselves pure for that day? Keep us from sin and cause us to kill sin, for your name's sake, by the Spirit. And Father, we pray that we would be busy with communing with you here, fellowshipping with you here, having as much of your Son's presence with us by the Spirit here as we can on this side of eternity. Thank you, Lord, for designing this from eternity past. Thank you, Lord, that you designed to save a bride for your Son. So, God, we pray that we would be chaste and faithful and pure and holy to Him. We pray this in Jesus' name.