The Wedding of the Lamb

The field is cleared. The Bride is gathered. The remnant of Israel mourning at Bozrah has at last seen the face of her Redeemer and the Spirit of grace and supplication has fallen on her. The dragon is sealed in the Abyss. The two beasts are in the lake of fire. The earth lies under the hand of its rightful Owner for the first time since Eden.

And in the throne room of heaven, a multitude lifts its voice for the moment the entire Bible has been straining toward.

"And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, 'Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! 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.'" (Revelation 19:6-7).

The marriage of the Lamb. The phrase contains the entire Bible.

What the Bridegroom wanted from the beginning

To understand what is happening at this hour, it is necessary to go back further than this book has gone so far. Further than Bozrah. Further than the Redeemer's first coming. Further than the fall of Babel, further than Eden, further even than the day humanity was made. Back to a moment in the eternal counsel of the Father, before the foundation of the world was laid, when the Father looked at His Son and determined to give Him a Bride.

Paul names this moment in Ephesians 1:4 — "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world." The Bride was chosen before the foundation. Before Adam was formed from the dust. Before the morning stars sang together. Before the first photon traveled the first inch. The Father had a Bride in mind for His Son, and the entire architecture of creation — the matter, the energy, the time, the human story — was constructed for the wedding. The cosmos exists because the Father determined to give the Son a wife.

That is the deepest thing the Bible has to tell us about why we are here.

This shifts how everything is read. Whoever reads Genesis 2 — "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him" — recognizes, beneath the sentence about Adam, the Father's prior decree about His own Son. Adam's marriage to Eve is not the original; it is the picture. The original is the marriage Adam's wedding pointed to, the marriage of the Last Adam to the Bride formed from His own pierced side.

Eve was taken from Adam's tsela — the Hebrew word translated rib but more precisely meaning side. The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, opened his side, took flesh and bone from him, and built a woman. When Adam woke, the woman was presented to him, and he sang the first poem in the Bible: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." (Genesis 2:23). The Bride was taken out of the side of the bridegroom.

Two thousand years ago, on a Roman cross, a soldier drove a spear into the side of the Last Adam. "One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out." (John 19:34). The same word in the Septuagint — pleura, the side. The Bride of the Last Adam was, like the Bride of the first Adam, taken from the open side of her husband during a sleep that was deeper than any sleep before. The structure of the wedding day at the close of Revelation was already inscribed in the structure of Eden.

The Bride is bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. Literally. She came out of His side.

The patterns through the Scripture

The Bible is not silent about the wedding between Genesis and Revelation. The narrative is woven with bridal patterns at almost every major turning point, each one revealing another facet of the marriage that was always coming.

Abraham, in Genesis 24, sends his servant to a far country to find a bride for his son Isaac. The servant prays at a well. A young woman named Rebekah comes to draw water. She is willing to leave her family and travel to a land she has never seen, to marry a man she has never met, on the testimony of a servant carrying the father's gifts. The pattern is not subtle. The Father in heaven has sent His Spirit to a far country called Earth to gather a bride for His Son. The Bride is willing to leave the only home she has known on the testimony of the Spirit, who carries the Father's gifts as the down payment on the wedding to come. Rebekah travels with the camels through the desert. The Bride travels through this age. And at the end of the journey, when the camels come over the rise, Isaac came out to meditate in the field in the evening; and he lifted his eyes and looked, and there, the camels were coming. Then Rebekah lifted her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from her camel. (Genesis 24:63-64). She covers herself with a veil. The servant tells Isaac the whole story. Isaac brings her into his mother's tent and takes her, and she becomes his wife, and he loves her. The pattern is the wedding at the end of this age.

Jacob loves Rachel and works seven years for her, and they seemed but a few days to him because of the love he had for her (Genesis 29:20). Our Redeemer has labored two thousand years for His Bride at the right hand of the Father, and the time has seemed short to Him because of the love He has for her.

Boaz redeems Ruth at the city gate of Bethlehem, taking the field and the widow in the same transaction. Chapter four of this book examined this. The Bride is the wife our Redeemer buys with the field; the buyback price is the blood of the kinsman.

Esther, the orphaned Jewish girl, is taken into the king's house and goes through twelve months of preparation — six months of myrrh and six months of perfumes — before she is presented to the king (Esther 2:12). The Bride of the Lamb has gone through her preparation as well. The myrrh is the suffering she has shared with Him in this age; the perfumes are the holiness the Spirit has worked in her. She is presented to the King at the wedding clothed in the cumulative effect of her engagement.

The Song of Solomon, the most romantic book in the Bible, is the love song between a bridegroom and his beloved that the Hebrew tradition has always recognized as the canonical celebration of the marriage of the Messiah to His people. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." (6:3). "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." (8:6). The Redeemer's love for His Bride is the love the Song of Songs has been describing for three thousand years.

At the wedding at Cana in John 2, the very first miracle Jesus ever performed in His public ministry was at a wedding. The wine ran out. He turned six pots of water into the best wine of the feast. The disciples watched and believed in Him. The first sign of His ministry was the saving of a wedding. The last great act of the Bible is His own.

In Matthew 22, He told a parable: a king prepared a wedding for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited. They refused. The king sent more servants. The invited mocked them and killed them. The king destroyed those murderers, then sent his servants out into the highways and called everyone they could find — both bad and good — until the wedding hall was filled with guests. The Father has been calling the wedding guests through the entire age. Some have refused. Some have come. The hall is filling. Tonight the doors close.

In Matthew 25, He told the parable of the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom. Five wise, five foolish. The bridegroom delayed. They all slumbered. At midnight a cry rang out: "Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!" The wise had oil in their lamps. The foolish did not, and went to buy oil. While they were gone, the bridegroom came, and "those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut." The watching Bride goes in. The unprepared find the door closed.

In Ephesians 5, Paul gives the deepest theological commentary on marriage in the entire New Testament, and he ends it with the line that explains everything: "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:32). Every human marriage since Eden has been pointing at this one. Every covenant a husband has ever made with a wife has been a small image of the covenant Christ made with His Church. The mystery of marriage, Paul says, is not finally about marriage. It is about Christ.

The Bride has made herself ready

"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." (Revelation 19:7).

She has made herself ready. The verb is hētoimasen — middle voice, prepared herself. The Bridegroom has paid the price. The Spirit has worked the perfumes. But there is something the Bride had to do that no one else could do for her: make herself ready. She had to keep the lamp filled. She had to keep the wedding garment unspotted. She had to keep watching when the Husband seemed long in coming.

"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." (19:8). Read that line carefully. The wedding gown is not generic; it is the righteous acts of the saints. Every act of obedience over the long engagement, every secret prayer in a closet, every dollar given out of poverty, every word of forgiveness extended to an enemy, every refusal to compromise when compromise was easier — every one of those acts is woven into the dress she wears tonight. She is wearing her own faithfulness.

This is one of the most stunning truths in the New Testament, and it needs a slower pace to sink in. The Bride does not arrive at the wedding wearing borrowed clothing. She arrives wearing what she has become. Her righteousness is gifted — that is the imputed righteousness of Christ Paul describes throughout his letters — but the outworking of that righteousness, the expression of it in real life under real pressure, is hers. The Bridegroom paid for the dress. The Bride wove it on the loom of her own days. And tonight she wears it.

Every faithful saint reading this book is, right now, weaving threads of that dress. Every act of obedience in the obscurity of an ordinary Tuesday is going into the linen. The Husband sees it. The Husband counts it. The Husband is keeping every thread.

The voice from the throne calls her in

"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.'" (19:9).

The marriage supper. The wedding banquet. A wedding feast lasted seven days (Genesis 29:27; Judges 14:12, 17), with the bride and groom seated at the head of the table, surrounded by guests who had come from every part of the family's life. The marriage supper of the Lamb is the cosmic version of that feast. Every guest who has ever loved our Redeemer through faith — Abel and Seth and Enoch and Noah, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and Elijah, the prophets of every century, the apostles, the martyrs of every age, the saints of every nation — every one of them is present. The Old Testament saints brought up at the resurrection of Christ in 31 AD are there. The wheat firstfruits gathered at the sixth seal are there. The two witnesses, Moses-and-Elijah-figures who stood in Jerusalem for 1,260 days, are there. The 144,000 from Mount Zion are there. The remnant of Israel, just brought home from Bozrah, will be brought to the table with the wounds in her brother's hands still vivid in her memory.

The hall fills. The seats fill. The wine — the best wine, the wine our Redeemer has been keeping since Cana — is poured. "For with you is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light." (Psalm 36:9).

And at the head of the table, the Bridegroom takes His seat with the Bride at His side.

What He has been waiting for

Something here calls for attention: a detail the Hebrews letter records and that almost no one ever stops at.

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2).

For the joy that was set before Him. The cross — the most appalling moment in cosmic history, the moment when the Son of God was nailed to a Roman gibbet and forsaken by the Father so that the redemption price could be paid — was endured because of a joy. A specific joy. A joy that was set before Him. He had it in view as He walked to Calvary. He saw it ahead. He went through Gethsemane and the scourging and the crown of thorns and the nails and the darkness because of this joy.

What was the joy?

The joy was the wedding. The joy was the moment of Revelation 19, when the Bride He paid for is at His side and the Father's plan from before the foundation of the world is consummated. The joy was her. The joy was us.

Read that sentence again. Our Redeemer went to the cross because of the joy of having you at the wedding feast.

This is the deepest thing the New Testament tells us about the heart of the Bridegroom. He did not endure Calvary because He had to. He endured it because He wanted you. The cross was the price He was willing to pay to have the Bride at His side at the wedding. Every drop of blood that fell from those wounds was a drop of love for a specific Bride. Every minute of the three hours of darkness was a minute He was willing to live in the absence of His Father's face so that He could have you in His house forever.

The wedding tonight is not, primarily, what the Bride has been waiting for. It is what He has been waiting for. It is the moment His own heart has been straining toward since before Eden was made. The Bride longs for the Bridegroom. But the Bridegroom longs more for the Bride.

"As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you." (Isaiah 62:5). Read it slowly. The rejoicing tonight is not principally Israel's joy or the Church's joy or the redeemed soul's joy. It is God's joy. The Father is rejoicing because His Son finally has His Bride. The Son is rejoicing because the cross was worth it.

The Bride sees His face

The wedding feast at Cana ended with the host saying to the bridegroom, "You have kept the good wine until now." (John 2:10). The marriage supper of the Lamb opens with the Bride realizing the same thing. Every joy she has ever known on earth — the warmth of family, the laughter of children, the embrace of friends, the sweetness of the gospel itself — was good wine. But none of it was the best wine. The best wine was kept for now.

She lifts her eyes. The face that John saw on Patmos and fell down as dead — the face like the sun shining in its strength, the eyes of fire, the hair white as wool — is now the face across the table. And the eyes of fire that searched her in the seven letters, that knew every weakness and every secret faithfulness of her engagement, are now looking at her with the love that endured the cross to have her at this table.

Revelation 22:4 will give the verse that closes the whole Bible's promise: "They shall see His face." This is the moment that promise begins to be fulfilled.

She sees the wounds. She sees the One she has loved without seeing for a lifetime. She sees the Bridegroom who has been preparing the chamber in His Father's house for two thousand years and has come back, at last, to bring her home. "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." (John 14:2-3). The chamber is built. The journey is over. The Husband is here.

She does not speak. There is nothing to say in this moment. She simply looks at Him and lets the joy that has been the destination of every road begin to wash over her in the silence of the marriage chamber.

The marriage supper begins.

Stepping toward the millennium

The wedding feast in heaven runs while, on the earth, the new kingdom is being established. The next chapter looks at the earthly side of this. The Bride and the Bridegroom do not stay isolated in the throne room; the marriage extends outward into the entire creation as our Redeemer begins His thousand-year reign with His wife at His side.

But this moment is not passed over quickly. The wedding feast is the consummation of everything the Bible has been pointing to. It is what the cross was for. It is what the engagement was for. It is what the Father has rejoiced over from before the foundation of the world.

" 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. "

He has His Bride. The price is paid. The dress is woven. The hall is full. The wine is poured. The eyes of fire look at her with the joy that endured the cross to have her here.

The morning stars sang at the foundation of the world. They sing again at the wedding.

He kept His promise.