The book of Revelation chapter
19, and our lesson today is going to be from verse 7 and 8. But
in order to appreciate what we have in verse 7 and 8, I would
like to read at least verses 4, 5, and 6. Because if the Holy
Spirit has given you comfort in knowing that the Lord God
is omnipotent, and almighty, then he will also give you great
comfort that he is omnipotent and almighty in every realm,
including what we're going to look at tonight, and that's salvation.
If he is almighty in every realm, then the Lord will give us comfort
that he is almighty in this very specific realm, and that is the
salvation of his people. And that's a comfort to God's
people, that he would be Lord God Almighty over the salvation
of his people. And in doing so, it would be
such a complete salvation, such a great salvation, such a glorious
salvation as the Lord God Almighty could give. Now, my dad did the
best he could by us when it came to finances. We didn't have a
lot. I got a brand new pair of pants
when school started. I took them off when I got home.
Put on play clothes. Put the school clothes back on
the next day and wore it. Saturday it got washed. That's
just the way it was. Well, when it comes, he did in
that sense the best he could by his kids. And the Lord God
Almighty is going to do the very best the Lord God Almighty will
be able to do for his children. And in that, we find this wonderful
passage. All right. Verse 4 of the 19th
chapter, the 4 and 20 elders and 4 beasts fell down and worshiped
God. that sat on the throne saying,
amen, hallelujah, they worship God. And that's a testimony about
these and about who they are worshiping. If we have any inclination
at all who the four living creatures are and the four and 20 elders
are, then it will lend itself to us worshiping this same great
glorious being because all of God's people are summed up in
the four and 20 elders. That's us, if we know Him, us
worshiping that God. And God only reveals Himself
to His people as the Lord God Almighty and nothing less. And
if we have really been born again, and I hate to use the word really
when we talk about born again, but sometimes we have to qualify
and clarify. If we've really been born again,
then we will recognize it is the Lord God Almighty that had
to save us. Anything short would have left
us out. We could not and would not have
been saved. Lord God Almighty, verse so.
5 And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God,
all ye servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great.
6 And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as
the voice of many waters, as the voice of mighty thunderings,
saying, And this again is a statement of all God's saved, and all the
elect angels together praising God. Now everybody will in time
and even the demons will in time. Every knee shall bow and every
tongue shall confess the Lord Jesus to the glory of God the
Father. That's going to happen. But thank
God in time. He comes and arrests his people
and puts a new song in their heart, and that is what it is.
Alleluia for the Lord, verse 6, and I heard it were a great
multitude, the voice of many waters, the voice of mighty thundering,
saying, Alleluia for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Now,
if he does in our heart, then we'll have
no trouble with the rest. And since he does, we'll praise
him for the rest. If he reigns, and since he does,
then when it comes to this bride that's being spoken of in the
next few verses, then we'll have no difficulty with him reigning
over them, over us in such a capacity as he's ruled over this world
in its creation and ruled over all instances and all issues
since he created it in such a way that he is the Lord God Almighty
and declared that not just here but throughout the word of God.
This will not be an issue. It will not shake us. It will
not bake us. It will keep us, and we'll rejoice. So it says, let us be glad, verse
7, and rejoice and give honor to him. Who? The Lord God omnipotent. Praise Him. If you praise Him
for everything, you'll praise Him for His new creation in Christ
Jesus. You'll praise Him for the church.
You'll praise Him for the part that He had in you, and then
you realize He had all the part. All right, let us be glad and
rejoice and give honor to him for the marriage of the Lamb
has come and his wife hath made herself ready. Now, boy, be careful
here, those are gonna say, look at there, she did it by herself.
Look at the next verse, we have to go to the next verse, don't
stop there. And by the way, if there are 500 verses in the Bible
that declare a truth, And one verse of scripture has been translated
where it appears that this is just a little wrong. Am I going
to take the one and conform the 500 or am I going to take the
500 and say, well, there's just a little misunderstanding here,
but let's use the rest of the Bible to make it agree. And that's
what we must do with this verse of scripture. I read several
commentators, and boy, you know, they're the way of the world.
And then I read some of the old parishioners. There's no way
in this world that a person can get righteousness by themselves
and perform righteousness. If our righteousness is as filthy
rags, it's gonna be from the day we're born to the day we're
dying, we're gonna need to rely on the righteousness of Christ.
It's not ours. And it's not used in the scripture
as a means of elevating some over others because their righteous
works were better than somebody else's. That is, that's poor
theology, number one. his poor interpretation, number
two, and his poor salvation, number three. All right, let's
look at this. Let us be glad and rejoice and
give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, for his
wife hath made herself ready, verse eight, and to her was granted
that she should be arrayed in fine linen. Granted that she
should be arrayed. This brings up some good points.
Christ has restored his bride by redemption. Now, in Adam all fell. And in
Adam, the bride fell. In Adam, all of Christ fell. I have come to this point in
a wedding ceremony, I will ask the groom Did you think about
what you were going to do in asking this young lady, this
lady to be your wife before you ask her? You know what they say? 100% so far. Yes, I thought about
it and I made up my mind before I ever asked. And that's the
way Christ did it. eternity past he made up his
mind who he was going to ask to be his bride before he makes
his bride his bride. And we find here that Christ
has restored his bride to bridehood by redemption, and he's espoused
his bride by regeneration. He called her, I want you to
be my wife. He espoused the church by that
internal holy call. That call that goes deeper than
the flesh, goes deeper than the ears, goes deep down into the
heart. That call that calls us out of
our complacency and calls us out of sin and out of darkness.
That call that is a call. is far beyond the general call
that goes out of a pulpit or goes out of our mouth to someone.
It is a call by the Holy Spirit to the heart of one of his chosen
ones and brings them out of sin and darkness and by that he has
espoused this one to be not just engaged but to be married to
him. This is the bride has been called
it by this by regeneration. This is spousal, this personal
call. We don't mean we've never stood
on the street corners. Who wants to be married to me?
No, that's not the way it's done. The Lord gives us someone to
go and ask. All right. And it says here,
Christ brings home his bride to New Jerusalem. That's what
he's going to do. That's why we have New Jerusalem
mentioned here. The church is going to be brought
to the church. The church is going to be brought to Christ.
And in some respects, we find that this marriage is started
in regeneration. This marriage, we're identified
as the bride, and it's almost another term in our time, in
our place right here. It's almost another word for
being regenerated. It took the call of God in regeneration
to acquaint us with the very fact that we are the bride of
Christ. He has done something. He's raised
us from the spiritual dead, but He's also espoused us to be His
own. We were promised to the Son before
the world began. We fell in Adam, and there was
a lamb slain from the foundation of the world to take care of
the issue, the problem. And in time, He takes care of
it at the cross. And all through time, the Holy
Spirit has been out applying this redemption to the hearts
of his people through regeneration and they're espoused and then
in regeneration we are taken to New Jerusalem spiritually
and in time. We'll be there in reality. We'll
be in the presence of the king. We'll know him as we are known. Now, in the Old Testament, there
are several verses of scripture that share with us what God had
to do to make this bride ready. Would you turn with me to one
of the most valuable? And that's over in the book of
Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three. I want
us to ask some questions as we go through here. What didn't
God furnish? for our first parents? What didn't
he furnish? And what did they do to acquire
it? All right, let's read that. Genesis
chapter three, verse 21. This is after the fall. And the
Lord is sharing us a wonderful lesson about what it is that
we must be given in order to have righteousness. Now, what
didn't the Lord give? He gave everything. He provided
every bit of clothing. In fact, He is so persnickety
that He had to strip them of their own righteousness. He had
to remove their own coats of fig leaves. He is not going to
intermix the two. He's going to strip them of their
own righteousness, which they made, and he is going to provide
for them a covering that he made. And what did they do to acquire
it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They were required, I can just
see the Lord, I have to back up just a moment to make this
statement. Both Nancy and my sons wrestled and I found out
after their career in wrestling that it was okay to stand on
somebody else's foot as long as you didn't get caught so they
couldn't get away from you. Now, if they got caught, they
got penalized, but if they didn't get caught, they were able to
grab their opponent and do the work that they needed to do.
Well, I said that to say this, the Lord stood on Adam and Eve's
feet, pinioned them down. Now, it doesn't say so in scripture,
but we know what he does. When he is applying his salvation,
he stops us, arrests us, causes us to be stationary in his presence
and bow humbly before his word of power and we come out saying
thank you. Now, the Lord came that day,
Genesis chapter three, verse 21. The Lord came that day and
it says, and unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God
make coats of skins. Now that's one thing, but he concludes the verse with
this, and clothed them. Now, the Universalist would like
us to stop before we get to those last three words. But he not
only made them clothes of skins, but he clothed them. That is his work. Nothing did
he leave up to them. It was the Lord God who furnished
the skins, made them into coats, and clothed our first parents. He clothed them. Now that clothing
that he put on them was typical pictorial of righteousness, the
Lord's righteousness, God's righteousness. Now it also shares with us, just
as we do, it was necessary that there be a substitute. We were
unable to stand before God on our own. We needed a substitute.
We needed someone to take care of the sin issue. And the Lord
Jesus Christ in the covenant of grace says, I'll take care
of all those that the Father has given me. And he redeemed
his people. And he bought them out of slavery
of sin. And he also clothed them. He made them their righteousness
and clothed them with the same. Turn with me, if you would, over
to the book of Luke chapter 15. In Luke chapter 15, we have the
parable, which is often called the, oh, the lost, not the lost
son, but the prodigal son. Really, it's the lost son. He's
more than prodigal. He's lost. In the book of Luke
chapter 15, Now, I'm not going to read the entire statement
that the Lord made with regard to this, but I do want to read
just towards the end of it what the Lord did for that son, what
the father did for the son. Now, this is so important. This
is what the father did for the son. Luke chapter 15, verse 22,
it shares with us, and the father said to his servants, bring forth
the best robe. and put it on him. Bring the best robe and put it
on him. Now this is sharing with us that
he doesn't have enough sense to put it on himself. But God
the Father has enough sense to do it to deliver us. Adam and Eve in their fallen
state did not have enough sense to put it on themselves. But
God did, and he clothed them. And now, typically speaking at
least, they were clothed in an acceptable robe, their nakedness
was covered, and it was symbolic of what Jesus Christ must and
will do for every one of his children. He will clothe them
with his own righteousness. In fact, it goes deeper when
he takes care of us. He closes with himself. He becomes our righteousness. So here in verse 22, bring forth
the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and
shoes on his feet. Now, he couldn't put the ring
on and he couldn't put the shoes on. Why? Because the father was
not going to let him do it. The father told his servants,
you clothed him, put the robe on him, you put the ring on his
finger, and you put the shoes on his feet. And when that son
got down the road 15 years, he could look back and say, I did
nothing to get what I got. I still have the best robe. I
still have the ring. And I still have the shoes on
my feet. And my father did it in such
a manner that I had nothing to do with it. And the church gets
down the road 15 years and looks back and says, I have a robe
that he robed me with. I have a signet, meaning I belong
to him. And he has shod me with the preparation
of the gospel of peace. He did it all. We're like infants. Oh, I love dressing Joshua. Now you could give him a shirt
and all they do is maul it. And you could give him some pants
and he'd play with it and slobber it on and stick it in his mouth.
But if you wanted it on him, you're going to do it. Now, when
he came out, he was glad to go outside in it and show it off. He was happy about it. The older
he gets, the happier he'll be about it. But it takes somebody
carefully with interest in to clothe properly. and carefully. And that's what the father does
for his children. He clothes his children with
his righteousness and gives every spiritual blessing in Christ.
And we look back and say, I had nothing to do with it. All I
did was have his feet on my feet, holding me still until the process
was finished. The robe of righteousness. It's
the Lord who furnished the skins. It is the Lord who furnishes
this robe. Turn with me back to the book
of Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah 61. Now there's nowhere
in all the Bible that talks about God having respect upon our righteousness. In fact, he has a lot against
our righteousness. I'm not gonna read that, but
we know the passage. Our righteousness is as filthy
rags. Our self-righteousness, that
which we are born with and that which we grow up with and that
what we try to present to people and to God is filthy rags. It
is worse than the worst. His is perfect. Ours is filthy
rags. And how people could go to that
verse of scripture in the book of Revelation and say that we
are promoted in a hierarchy of the system of God by our good
deeds is far beyond what the word ever intended to mean. But
notice here in Isaiah 61, it talks about this robe that the
Lord has prepared for his people, Isaiah 61 and verse 10. Isaiah
61 and verse 10. It says here, I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord. What did we read over in Revelation
chapter 19? The church is praising God and
they say, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. And He reigns over
all the systems of the earth, and He reigns over creation,
and He reigns over every creature, and every kingdom, and He reigns
over salvation. He is the Lord God omnipotent
in salvation. It took this God to do what He
said needed to be done with sinful man. They're in a desperate situation,
and we need the Lord God omnipotent. Now notice here, they greatly
rejoiced. The Lord, my soul shall be joyful
in my God. Why? For he hath clothed me with
the garments of salvation. He shared that with Adam and
Eve in a picture. But he clothes his people with
the garments of salvation. He clothes us with Christ. He
clothes us with a righteousness that is impeccable, is perfect,
is glorious. And we rejoice in the Lord. My
soul shall be joyful in my God. For he hath clothed me with the
garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness. As a bridegroom decketh himself
with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. Who provided the jewels for the
bride? The Father. The father always
provided the gifts for the bride. And if we have anything to do
with that righteousness, we just like to settle into it a little
more. We are never opposed to him covering
us. We'll never admit that it's mine
in the sense that I performed it, therefore it's mine. It was
given to me by God, the righteous judge. It is his righteousness,
it's his son who is righteous, and now I've been granted too.
When we look at this marriage found over in the book of Revelation,
it's a glorious statement for a Western marriage is different
than Eastern marriage customs. We've all witnessed and been
a wedding, I'm sure, and seeing that some of us have even been
part of it. The preacher asked me, and well
done, I did. But we have these customs, and
we think of that they're equal to the Eastern customs. In the
Eastern customs, the marriage was always arranged by the father. Now we say, I don't want that
in my life. Well, I want that in my spiritual life. It's always arranged by the father.
Now the wedding itself is so much different than ours. You
remember reading about Isaac? His father said to his servant,
you go over there, because I don't want any woman from over here
marrying my son. You go over there. And he went
over there. That woman had never laid eyes
on that man. And that man had never laid eyes
on her. Now, this is just from a human
standpoint. And they came. She came in a troop of camels.
She slid off that camel and put a veil over herself. It says
they went into a tent. And next day, they're married.
Now the glorious thing about the marriage of the church to
Christ is when He regenerates us, we know more about Christ
than we could have ever learned in 10,000 books. He shares Himself with our soul. We know more about Him. I remember
going to the deacon of a church and telling him I know more about
grace now than I've ever known in my life. I know more about
Christ. It was the revelation. It was
the opening up. And as we go through time, we
learn more about Christ. Not that He is bigger or has
more. We just learn more. He gives
us everything He has. We learn more about what He has
given us. We learn more of His righteousness. We learn more of His holiness. Not that He becomes more holy.
He's always been that holy. We learn more about Him. Our
eyes are continuously being opened up to the great grace of God. Not that He is more gracious.
It's just that we learn more of His grace. And then, this
is just the earnest. This is the down payment. We
get to learn so much about him, and yet Paul said, after knowing
so much about him, I'm still looking through a glass darkly.
It's still like looking through welding glass at the sun. But
then, oh my goodness, we shall know him as we are known. There will be a relationship
that the church will have with Christ. To know Him, to know
Him in aspects that we can't even think about now. We're given
so much now, but then to know Him face to face, to be in His
presence. We have been given so much in
regeneration. We have been given so much about
God. We have been given the ability,
we've gone into the tent with Him. He's opened Himself up to
us. He's revealed Himself to His
people. How in the world could Peter
say, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God? Jesus
answered it for us. Flesh and blood hath not revealed
this unto you, but my Father which is in heaven. We were there
in darkness, and he turned on the light, and we saw him as
the Son of God. We saw him as the Holy One of
Israel. We saw him as the mediator between
man and God, the man Christ Jesus. He becomes real to his people
in this revelation. And that's exactly what we find
the name of this book is, the revelation of Jesus Christ. We
could put another word there, the marriage between Christ and
his church. He lets us see him like we never
saw him. We knew about him. Now we can
know him. We knew words about, oh, we knew
about Christmas, we knew about Easter, we knew, oh, yeah, heal
this person, that person. And nine times out of 10, we
never saw any further than that. It was just a nice healing service.
And after it's all over, oh, he raised that lady's back. That's
what he does to the church. He healed that issue, but oh,
that's what he does for the church. He raised that one from the dead.
Oh, that's what he does for the church. He just lets us see what
glory there is in all of those things. We see him as he is. Now, in verse eight of that,
it says there, she has washed, excuse me, going back to the
book of Revelation chapter 19, and I'll just mention a few things
and then we'll close, but verse seven says, let us be glad and
rejoice and give honor to him for the marriage of the Lamb
has come and his wife hath made herself ready. Got our feet down
on the ground, and he stood right on top of us, our feet, and made
us ready. He put his robe on us, his righteousness. He cleaned us, cleansed us, breathed
into us the breath of life, and we became a living soul. And to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen. Oh, it was granted. Now, if we
have any works, Ephesians 2.10 tells us where they came from.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which he hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
And if we ever have any question about it, we just turn over there
to the book of Matthew and we hear the Savior say, I want to
thank you for taking care of me when I was in jail. And I
want to thank you for taking care of me when I was thirsty.
And I want to thank you for taking care of me when I was down and
out. And the church looks at each other and looks around and
says, when did we do that? When did we do that? That's what
it is to have His workmanship in us, working for His glory. We're not keeping track. We are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works. If you go to the rest of that
passage, those on the left-hand side, those that are without
Christ, they say, when didn't we do that? When didn't we do
that? They're measuring their righteousness
by what they did, by their works. And you know what the end of
that is? Depart from me. Never knew you. And to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. For the fine
linen is the righteousness of Christ. I've added a word. It's the only thing that could
fit there. It's not, it's the righteousness
of saints, but the righteousness of saints is Christ. That's all
it could fit there. It can't be translated any other
way to fit the rest of the Bible. We're just gonna make it conform.
Now turn with me back to Revelation chapter four. Revelation chapter
four. I have to say that she did not
purchase by any price of her own this robe, but received it
as the gift and grant of her blessed Lord. Revelation chapter
7 verse 14 the scripture says, but I said unto him sir thou
knowest And I said and he said to me These are they which came
out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the lamb That's our only whiteness
is the blood of Christ. It's the the Lord Jesus Christ
in his redemptive work. Now, when we went over this,
it doesn't say the great tribulations, it says of great tribulation.
And we mentioned this, and I believe it more now than then. That great
tribulation is not some great trouble that we're gonna go through
because we love Christ. That tribulation is what God
put us through when he took us out of our religion. and brought
us to Christ. It was great tribulation. Boy,
we're hanging on and we're hanging on and we're hanging on to our
religion and Christ pries it out of our hands. What great,
what we thought was right turns out to be wrong. And what we
thought was wrong turns out to be right. We thought Christ was
wrong, and he's right. We thought our righteousness,
our works, our self-righteousness was good, and it was so bad.
He pries it out of our hands. Great tribulation, oh, man. Have you ever pried something
out of a little kid's hand in a grocery store? I'm telling
you, they can hang on for dear life. They got suction cups in
their fingers. and you just work on one hand
and they grab it with the other one and they back, well, it's
just like that with us. God takes us through great tribulation. Oh, we as kids and our kids,
I want this more than anything. And we go put them through great
tribulation, break their heart and their spirit to pry it out
of their hands. And then when God does that for
us, regenerates us. Knowing that we've been redeemed,
he regenerates us. We say, oh, thank you, God. That
was great tribulation that you brought me through. But now,
I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb. His righteousness
is my robe. Christ is my hope. Christ is
my peace. And I'll never, ever depend on
what I once depended on. And that was my righteousness,
my righteous acts. God said, I'm going to shovel
them into heck. That's what I'll do with them.
They're worthless. I'll burn them up on the cross.
They're worthless.