God and humankind: The perfect love story
God loves man as the husband loves his wife. But how about us? The Chief Apostle urged the congregation to appreciate their election.
“Then he said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!”’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true sayings of God.’” (Revelation 19:9) This was the Bible text for the divine service on 17 March 2024 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
“Today we have a very well-known word about the marriage supper of the Lamb. And we know it, it refers to the first resurrection.” Chief Apostle used the image of spouses and fiances to illustrate the relationship between God and humankind. “God was a faithful husband. But His wife, Israel, was not faithful.”
Beyond an image
“It’s just an image, but it tells us something,” Chief Apostle went to explain. God loves humankind out of love and not because of his merit. Out of His love, the Son of God renounced God’s glory to come to earth to deliver us from sin and called us to eternal fellowship with Him.
“And we love our husband, our bridegroom. We have a good reason to love Him. We love Him because He loves us.” If we do his will, it’s not to be rewarded. But just because we love Him and we want to please Him. A relationship of love.
The New Testament uses the image of the wedding feast to illustrate Christ’s return and God’s eternal fellowship with His people. They will experience perfect joy and peace. We will praise God in eternity. “Imagine how grateful we will be,” said the Chief Apostle. Being delivered from earth, from the evil one, from all the suffering, the injustice, the violence, from everything we suffer from on earth. And finally, we will be in perfect fellowship with one another, the living and the dead.
Our election: source of peace and joy
Already today, faith in our election brings us great peace and joy. “Let us be thankful for our election. Let us be joyful that we know that God loves us. we are loved by the One who is absolutely perfect and holy for no reason. And we can be sure He loves us. That is a great joy and a great peace: I know I’m loved.”
Another aspect to be grateful for is that He has given us the certainty that He will come to take us with Him. “That’s not just a probability, that is our certainty!“ We can be absolutely certain that Jesus Christ will come to lead us into His kingdom.
A foretaste of the marriage supper in heaven
Here, today, we can already have a foretaste of this feast of marriage in heaven through the worthy celebration of Holy Communion. Each time we celebrate Holy Communion, we thank God for having sent His Son, and we thank God for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We receive also the strength we need to do the will of God. “Let us celebrate Holy Communion as a true preparation and anticipation of the marriage of Lamb in heaven,” Chief Apostle went to conclude his sermon.
