The Wedding at The Beginning and At the End…wedding parables pt 1

…but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:20-25)

The Bible begins and ends with a wedding.

One of the earliest human experiences recorded in the Divine record, is the wedding of the first man and the first woman.

At every step of Creation, God declared that his work of creation was good. Everything was deemed to be good according to God; Animals, mountains, trees, fish, birds, the sun and moon and stars, all were declared to be good.

The first “not good” that the Creator uttered occurred before the fall of man. It was declared “Not Good” for man to be alone.

How does the Creator turn a “not good“into a “good”? I read somewhere that the answer to that question looks an awful lot like a death and resurrection. The LORD God put man into a deep sleep and performed the first surgery upon him, for we are literally told that the LORD removed a “side” from the sleeping Adam, and formed the woman, who would be the man’s counterpart.

Upon bringing the man out of his sleep,after closing the wound in his side, (The first surgery), God brought the woman to the man.

Adam had not yet fallen, and lived in a state of acute spiritual perception. He could see down through the mists of time, that what God was doing pointed to an ultimate wedding, and the joining of another Groom with a wound in his side, and to another bride which God had brought out through blood and water.

Adam then prophesied,

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.(Genesis 2:23-24)

What did Adam know yet of a Father and Mother? But he spake by the Spirit of the LORD.

As Paul the Apostle tells us, the joining of Adam and his bride pointed to Christ and his church!

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.(Ephesians 5:30-31)

Every wedding is greater than the bride and groom, all point to the ultimate groom and the bride which He purchased with His own blood and will soon bring to himself, “to have and to hold”.

The culminating event of human history will be the final great feast, which is the ground of all joy and wellbeing, the Marriage supper of the Lamb!

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.  And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:7-10)

Mankind was made to live with God, and to be indwelt by God and to dwell in God. There will be a wedding at the end, of which all previous weddings only pointed to. The Bride* makes herself ready of the great day, in spite of hardship and separation. The Groom has a scar in his side, and has purchased his bride by winning a great battle over evil.

The friends of the groom, busy themselves preparing the bride, washing garments, gathering oil for lamps, and constantly reminding the bride not to let the day come upon them unprepared.

Of course there are complications, as in every upcoming wedding.

There is a false bride, the Harlot, of which I have more to say later. There is also a false groom, AntiChrist and a false feast, (the New Age Utopian,Humanistic, ecumenical dream), and many false friends of the bride, as well as enemies.

Jesus had much to say about this, telling parables around the theme of weddings, likening his Kingdom to great feasts ad always sounding the note of the need of preparation. We will be looking at this in the articles to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*(always a corporate term for the true spiritual company, true worshippers)