Day 12: Jesus Is the Bridegroom

Day 12: Jesus is the Bridegroom

Prayer:

Our Father in heaven, help us to understand the depth of Your love for us. Even as we reflect on our heavenly Bridegroom, woo us to Yourself. Teach us to love You with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, that Jesus might be magnified in our lives. Amen.

Primary Scripture:

John 3:28-30: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but ‘I have been sent before Him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Perhaps we most often think of ourselves in relation to God as servants to our Master. But when God first created mankind, He envisioned something far more intimate than simply a master-servant relationship. When God said, "It is not good for man to be alone," was He echoing the desire of His own heart in creating mankind? For wasn't this His original purpose: someone to set His love upon, and someone who would freely love Him in return?

Throughout the Old Testament God describes His relationship with His people in terms of a husband with his bride. There is tenderness, concern, longing, compassion, care, even jealousy; for God Himself says that He is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 6:15; Joshua 24:19). He even goes so far as to say that one of His names is Jealous (Exodus 34:14). He is jealous for our undivided love, and He likened bowing down to other gods to adultery—a strong term filled with grievous pain and deep emotion.

Idolatry is divided attention and the absence of exclusivity that the closest of love relationships demands for complete trust, openness, and intimacy. God's hatred of idolatry stems from the greatness of His love for us. He wants us for Himself alone. He uses the picture of marriage to convey His feelings for us. Marriage is designed for exclusivity. And in order for the marriage relationship to flourish, it must be so.

In Deuteronomy 4:24 Moses tells us that our God is a consuming Fire, a jealous God. Solomon refers to the jealousy of love as a flaming fire that no amount of water, no matter how great the deluge, can quench (Song of Solomon 8:6-7). This is the strength of God's love for you—and why He is a consuming Fire. He is jealous over your love.

The Old Testament weaves this marriage metaphor from Genesis to Malachi. As God fashioned Eve from the rib of Adam, there is a hint of the prophetic. As He fashioned the woman from a rib taken from Adam's side, was God envisioning His counterpart who would be brought forth from His wounded side?

There are other types of Christ and the church in the Old Testament that foreshadow this picture of Christ as our heavenly Bridegroom. Isaac and Rebekah show the Father-Son relationship in acquiring a bride (Genesis 24). The most notable type of Christ is Boaz with Ruth. A wealthy Israelite man shows kindness and favor to a poor Gentile woman, who had been excluded from the assembly of the Lord because she was a Moabitess (Deuteronomy 23:3). Boaz protected Ruth, provided for her, and fulfills the redemption requirements to take her for his wife as her kinsman-redeemer, a close relative of her mother-in-law. She finds refuge under the sheltering wing of God (Ruth 2:12) and later asks to be taken under his sheltering wing (Ruth 3:9). All she had to do was rest in the work Boaz would do for her—for, the text says, he would not rest until he had concluded the matter (Ruth 3:18). What a lovely picture of our relationship with Christ, our Kinsman-Redeemer (Ruth 3:9).

The terms of the Old Covenant were vows of love, a marriage covenant, exclusive between God and Israel; and it was to be permanent. But they violated the covenant and broke faith with God, turning to other gods with their love and devotion. Israel broke the heart of God.

But they could not quench His love for them or for mankind. Through the prophet Hosea, God demonstrates the magnitude of His love. To illustrate His love, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute, a picture of how far Israel had gone away from God and His love. After having three children together, Hosea’s wife again goes back to prostitution, committing adultery against her husband. Again, God instructs Hosea to go seek for her and bring her back to his home. He finds her and has to buy her back out of the slavery of sex trafficking. This is the intense situation God uses to reveal the depths of His love. He will go to any lengths to win us back to Himself. “And it shall be in that day,” says the Lord, “that you will call Me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer call Me ‘My Master’ . . . “I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:16, 19-20).

Even while He was pleading with Israel to return to Him, to remember how they had loved Him at the first (Jeremiah 2:2), He made the promise of a New Covenant that would provide His own Holy Spirit to live within us, enabling us to walk in His ways and not go astray (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 11:19-20, 16:60-63, 34:25-31, 36:25-27, 37:14, 26-28). The New Covenant was also a marriage covenant, but this time it would be an everlasting covenant of peace that would not, could not be broken; for it would not be dependent on us. It is fully the work of the Triune God: The Father sent the Son who, in turn, sent His own Spirit to live within all who believe, all who call upon the name of Jesus.

It is interesting that Jesus' first miracle was at a wedding feast. The story is puzzling in many ways, but the details give us clues that Jesus is looking beyond the physical need at the wedding. At the wedding when Jesus' mother tells Him they have no wine, His response shocks us. Jesus doesn't call her mother. No, He calls her "Woman." To us this seems rude . . . unless He was thinking from a different realm altogether. Jesus' response takes us back to Genesis 2:23, "She shall be called Woman." With this word He refers back to the first wedding, the one created and officiated by God Himself—Jesus was that Creator, Designer, Officiator; for He is God. He was there.

After the first Adam and first Woman had disobeyed the one command God had given them, they tried to conceal their sin and cover their shame (Genesis 3:7). But fig leaves would never do. They didn't yet understand the truth about sin; they had believed the Lie: "You shall not surely die!" (Genesis 3:4). They would soon vividly learn that sin carries death in its DNA (Genesis 3:21).

After the Fall, God promises that the Seed of the woman would come and crush Satan's head. Someday a child would be born from Woman who would reverse the death sentence hanging over us due to sin by taking the death penalty for us all. Now at this wedding, Jesus, the Last Adam, looks back through the annals of time and calls His mother Woman—the one from whom that promised One was born. He was that promise.

Then He begins to unfold His real purpose in a most dramatic demonstration of the New Covenant. The seemingly unnecessary details in the story are embedded with spiritual truth. Six waterpots of stone used for ceremonial purification, each containing lots of water. Could this be a picture of the hearts of all mankind? Hearts of stone (Ezekiel 36:26-27) need more than the purification rites the Old Testament offers. Christ has promised the transformation of our hearts into which He will pour the wine of the Holy Spirit. Here is abundance when we've come to the end of our own resources; here is quality beyond the best we have to offer.

Following the account of the wedding in Cana, after the conversation with Nicodemus (John 3) in which Jesus talks about a rebirth by the Spirit—the New Covenant promise—we are told of a conversation John the Baptist had with some of his disciples. They were rankled because more people were starting to follow Jesus than were coming to John. John settles their angst by using the wedding metaphor to explain. John was just the friend or best man who rejoices in the Bridegroom's day of joy. Jesus is the Bridegroom, come to claim His bride; it was only right that the bride should flock to Him.

The night before Jesus died, He took the lowliest place of a servant and washed His disciples’ feet. He was revealing the extent of His love. He did not come to lord it over them, but to serve them and to meet their needs. Later that night, Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you…” (John 15:15-16). God doesn’t just want servants; He desires an intimate love relationship, a close friendship in which He could share the depths of His heart.

In instituting what we call "The Lord's Supper" or communion, Jesus took a cup of wine. In Jewish tradition, when a man desired to marry a woman, after obtaining the permission of her father, the young man would officially offer his proposal by pouring a glass of wine and handing to the girl. By taking the cup and drinking it, she signified her acceptance of his proposal. At His last Passover meal, Jesus is holding out to us the wine cup of a new marriage covenant that will be eternally unbroken, for the keeping of it is assured by His Spirit within us. It was a covenant proposal, an everlasting promise—the wine of the New Covenant, which Christ would seal with His own blood. God brings forth His bride from His wounded side, out of the very wound she herself has inflicted, and fills her with the wine of His Holy Spirit. So strong and unquenchable is His love! Oh, the fullness of the grace of God!

When Paul instructs husbands and wives in the marriage relationship, he says he is speaking about a mystery: Christ and the church. Mystery indeed! For God to desire us? For God to make an eternal covenant of love with us that would never be broken? Amazing love. How can it be? Jesus was not only willing to draw near to us in our sin, but also to absorb it into Himself, to bear the death it inflicted, that He might win us for Himself. With such a love as this, is it any wonder that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our being? Our Bridegroom jealously desires our exclusive love. This is His heart toward us. He is the Lover of our souls.

Family Worship:

Reflect on all the ways God demonstrates His love for you. In what ways has His love revealed His grace to you and your family?

Conclude your family time with prayer, thanking Him for HIs great, eternal love.

Jesus Christ: our Heavenly Bridegroom, the Lover of our souls who has, through His death and resurrection, made an eternal covenant of love with us.

Other Related Scriptures:

Song of Solomon 8:6-7: Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.

Isaiah 54:5-8. 10: “For your Maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel: He is called the God of the whole earth. For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused,” says your God. “For a mere moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer… “For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you, or shall My covenant of peace be moved,” says the Lord, who as mercy on you.

Isaiah 62:5b: . . . as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall you God rejoice over you.

Jeremiah 3:14: “Return, O backsliding children,” says the Lord; “for I am married to you. I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”

Jeremiah 31:3: The Lord has appeared to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34: “Behold the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,” says the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Hosea 2:16, 19-20: “And it shall be in that day,” says the Lord, “that you will call Me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer call Me ‘My Master’ . . . “I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.”

Matthew 22:35-37: Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.”

Mark 12:30: “‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.”

Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

II Corinthians 11:2: For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

Ephesians 2:4-6: But God, who is rich is mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, make us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 5:25-33: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Revelation 19:7-9: Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. 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.”