Ease and Luxury

The Marriage of the Lamb

           In our text the cry is, “…the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready!”  This addresses the heart.  It is not an historical event.  Nor is it merely a future dispensational event.  It is a spiritual experience!  The marriage of the Lamb is that revelation of the Christ that causes us to know that we are united to Him; it is the conscious knowledge and the experiential reality.  We cannot understand the relationship of the bride with the Lamb Bridegroom until we know UNION. We cannot be in that particular concert with Christ which the name bride or wife expresses until we yield ourselves to be made ONE IN HIM.  And that is not something which happens someday when Jesus comes crashing down through the clouds.  Oh, no!  This is a present reality!  When I know that I am united with the Christ I am so identified with His name, His person, His presence, His life, and His interests that they are paramount with me.  Few know it!  A wife is one who has reached maturity, fully developed in mind and body, her hormones have kicked in, and she has given herself in a mature relationship completely and unreservedly for her lover; one who has lost her own name, residence, and self-identity to take his.  She has left all to follow him!  The result of such a union is described by the inspired apostle in these words: “…that we should be married to another, even to HIM who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God” (Rom. 7:4).   

             It was to the church which is His body that Paul wrote, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning CHRIST AND THE CHURCH” (Eph. 5:31-32).  It was also to the saints that Paul addressed these significant words, “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to HIM…” (Rom. 7:4).   Again it was to the elect of the Lord that Paul explained, “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to ONE HUSBAND, that I may present you as a chaste virgin  to CHRIST” (II Cor. 11:2).

             In our consideration of the Bridegroom and the bride we need to remember that first of all these precious realities are fulfilled within each of us personally!  Christ is not just in some far-off heaven somewhere; for us He is our life, our reality, and our only hope of glory; and that hope of glory is neither Christ in heaven nor Christ coming again — it is CHRIST IN YOU!  This is a phrase of inexhaustible wonder — “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but CHRIST LIVETH IN ME” (Gal. 2:20).  “For He abideth with you, and SHALL BE IN YOU” (Jn. 14:17).  “He shall be IN you.”  In these simple words our Lord announces the wonderful mystery of His indwelling which was to be the fruit and the crown of His redeeming work.  It was for this that man had been created!  It was for this, God’s incarnation in flesh, that the Spirit had revealed God unto men!  It was for this that Jesus had lived and was about to die.  Dwelling in them, He would prepare them to receive Himself as their true life and identity — as Bridegroom!  We can never understand the deep mystery of the Bridegroom and the bride until we know that Christ is the Bridegroom and that Christ lives in us.  All who give godly consideration to these simple truths cannot avoid the conclusion that the BRIDEGROOM IS WITHIN OURSELVES.  There is deep within  the inner sanctum of each of us a place where the Bridegroom dwells and He comes out of that place and woos us into intimacy of fellowship and vital union with Himself!  Isn’t it wonderful!

- Preston Eby

An Easter Hymn

Let thy blood in mercy poured, let thy gracious Body broken
Be to me, O gracious Lord, of thy boundless love the token.
Thou didst give thyself for me, now I give myself to thee.

Thou didst die that I might live, Blessed Lord, thou cam’st to save me;
All that love of God could give Jesus by His sorrows gave me.
Thou didst give thyself for me, now I give myself to thee.

By the thorns that crowned thy brow, by thy spear-wound and the nailing,
By thy pain and death, I now claim, O Christ, thy love unfailing.
Thou didst give thyself for me, now I give myself to thee.

Hymn 313 (Episcopal Hymnal 1982)  By John Brownlie 1959-1985

Lord, Not My Feet Only

With regards to Maundy Thursday Services there is wonderful news. Biblical interpreters over the centuries almost unanimously agree that the first message of the foot washing story is that it is an interpretation of the death of Jesus.
When the Lord gets up from the table, puts on a loincloth of a slave, and kneels at the feet of his disciples, He does it first and foremost to teach His disciples the meaning of His death. It is indeed significant that, after He had finished washing their feet, He sits down with them again at the table and says, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you,” and I am not trying to cast that into the background; however, all interpreters seem to agree that it is the secondary, not the primary meaning of His action. The primary meaning is that the Son of God is stooping down from His heavenly throne to wash us clean from our transgressions. The primary meaning is that the Lord of the Universe is preparing to undergo utmost humiliation in order to purify us from the contamination of sin. The primary meaning is that the Eternal Word which was in the beginning with God has become flesh, not only “to dwell among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), but also to love us and to serve us to the uttermost limit, even to death on the cross. And so the evangelist John begins the story by telling us, “now before the feast of the Passover . . . . Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (13:1). In this way, you see, John places the story in its proper context before he tells it.

Where Faith Begins

Did You Ever Weep?

This is one of only two times in the four Gospels that we are told Jesus wept? Surely this is extraordinary. The Gospel of Luke says he is weeping for the city. What is the city? It is God’s holy city, or was supposed to be; but what a long, long history of disobedience and disappointment! How Jerusalem had abandoned her holy calling! For a thousand years God had been preparing her through the prophets to meet her Messiah, her Saviour, her Redeemer; now, as the Messiah at last appears, she is going to arrest him on a trumped-up charge, try him in the middle of the night, flog him nearly to death, and execute him the way we execute serial killers and terrorist bombers, though in an infinitely worse manner.
Yet Jesus does not weep for himself. He weeps for the city. He weeps for those who will soon shout “Crucify him!" In other words, he weeps for us.

Did anyone ever Weep for you? Did your mother shed tears because you did something that disappointed her? Did your father weep for you because you got into trouble? Or did a daughter weep because her father abused her? Did a son weep because his father blamed him for something he never did? Did you weep for a friend lost on the battlefield or in an air crash? Did you weep for a child lost in the drug culture or for a grandchild kicked out of school?  Did you weep for someone committing a hideous injustice? Everyone has grieved for the victims in Christchurch massacre, but what about the man in jail? Do we weep for him too?  All  these tears and every tear that has ever been shed by anyone anywhere are rolled up into the tears of Jesus.  Jesus weeps for us. The Son of God weeps for you.

Atlantic Monthly Cover Story

In April 2001 , The Atlantic Monthly featured a cover story by David Brooks, author of Bobo; in Pazmdire, a well-received study of “bourgeois bohemian" baby boomers. ln the Atlanatic article, entitled “The Next Ruling Class: Meet the Organization Kid,” Brooks described Americas young elite and their attitude toward religion (specifically, Christianity). Robert Wuthnow of the Princeton faculty notes that they are much more interested in “spirituality, as they call it” than students a generation ago, but (the reporter continues) “the character of their faith tends to be unrelievedly up-beat.” Again Wuthnow: “You never hear about sin and evil and judgment. It’s about love and success and being happy." This is disturbing on a number of counts. For one thing, it means that they don't know very much about love, because real love (agape) inevitably brings suffering. For another, it means that although they may be busily (and admirably) serving at soup kitchens and building houses for Habitat for Humanity, they have little sense of the structures of sin and evil that pervade human society everywhere and cause so many to remain impoverished and downtrodden. In particular, Wuthnow’s analysis means that their “spirituality” has no Cross at its center. The author, David Brooks, concludes: “These are some of the best and brightest our high schools have to offer . … . but they live in a country that has lost, in its frenetic seeking after happiness and success, the language of sin and character-building through combat with sin.” Notably, in a CNN interview on October 50, 2001, David Brooks stated that this generation of young elites had perhaps been dramatically altered by the aftermath of September 11. Surely there is an opportunity for the churches here.

Quote from a book by Fleming Rutledge