In a few minutes we are going to have a celebration. We are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Have you given any thought to why we say we celebrate the Lord's Supper instead of something like take it or have it or do it? On our anniversary Lois and I usually go out and celebrate our marriage by going to someplace and getting a real nice meal. It's a celebration time. If we think about our years together we want to celebrate and express our joy. For all of us a nice meal is often part of celebrations. When I graduated from Royal Roads my parents took me out to a high class restaurant and we had a delicious meal that's part of the celebration. I'm sure you all do things like this from time to time as you have something to celebrate. The Lord's Supper should be that kind of an expression of joy for Christ's people. A celebration of Christ. I think our simple approach to the Lord's Table passes by some of its meaning most often Some churches I've read of heard about have seen a need to emphasize the celebratory element of this. When the congregation gathers at the Lord's Table they have the pews draped in white linen cloths to give the image of a deal, a fancy meal. It gives that formality, that celebratory sense to it. But I think that usually we do not see the Lord's Table as a banquet table. Though we customarily speak of celebrating the Lord's Supper it seems to me we mostly miss the sense of celebration. My focus I know at least tends to be more on my sin and Christ covering my sin and I don't get to the celebration part of it very quickly easily. But brothers and sisters, celebration should be our normal view of this Supper, our default view of it. It's easy for us to look at Christ's death which is figured for us here and see it as a defeat instead of a victory. We need to remember that the cross was a field of triumph for Christ. The battle was won there. There on the cross Jesus made atonement for our sin, cleansing us, freeing us. There the door of heaven was opened for God's people. There our Lord embraced death and conquered it. By the cross we who believe are joined to Christ. And so the Feast of the Cross, the Lord's Supper, is a token of the Church's marriage to Christ. I'm picking up a theme from Revelation and some other parts of the scripture today, the wedding feast of the Lamb. Three things I'd like you to see, it reminds you that the Church is Christ's bride. It calls you to look forward to the great feast to come in the new world and it calls you to rejoice in the table of the Lord today. First too we start with the recognition that the Church is Christ's bride. We are loved by Christ. Just not just in the New Testament, go back into Jeremiah 31 verse 3 and God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. I think what that means. When your husband or wife, for those of you who are married, told you for the first time, I love you, how did that make you feel? I don't know of anybody who went away weeping because of that and at least not in sorrow anyway, they might have been glad tears. If someone you admire tells you he prizes you, how does that make you feel? And then you discover that person has gone to great lengths, has worked through immense difficulties to find you and help you. That's even better, right? He says he prizes you. But here it's Jesus Christ. Here it's the infinite glorious God who took on our flesh to save us. Who's saying to you, I love you. With everlasting love. And you know nobody has ever even begun to face the trials that he took on to reach you and to reach me. He says I love you, I want you to marry me. All through the Bible, God expresses his love for his people. It doesn't just begin with Christ's coming. He calls you to follow him, he calls you to be faithful to him. He pours out his gifts on you, he warns you against evil and he continues doing that in the face of rejection. All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Romans 21 here quotes from Isaiah 65 verse 2, it reflects other places, Proverbs 1, 24, Jeremiah 33, 15, all through the Bible we see God reaching out to disobedient people and calling them back to himself and calling us and strengthening us. We're loved by Christ. We can compare it perhaps to a situation in which a very wealthy man who is renowned for his honesty and his uprightness, his goodness, his kindness and he seeks out an ugly slum girl and she's desperately poor and she's not only not clothed well and what have you but she's ugly in her deeds as well as her words and he comes to the slum girl and urges her to marry him. To receive the benefits of his wealth and his goodness and he continues in his suit in spite of her clinging to drugs and prostitution and all the ugliness of her present life. And you say whoa, that's some love but Christ's love is greater by far because our rebellion is far deeper than anything I have described here. The great evidence of God's love is the cross. Romans 5, 8, God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Jesus' love is so great he gave himself up to a terrible death, a cursed death for us. To open a door for you and for me to come to God and to be joined to him. And that love is the only motivation there is for Christ to give himself for you. We have nothing to offer for it. And so with visible love God invites you to come to him. He woos you with tender words and with kind deeds to receive his blessings. We are loved by Christ by the whole God and Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They love us. He loves us with everlasting love. We are espoused to Christ. Paul wrote in a verse he read in 2 Corinthians 11, for I am jealous with you with godly jealousy for I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. This is the day when marriages were normally arranged by parents or others in authority over people. Paul is saying he stood in that case to arrange our marriage to Christ. In Ephesians 5 we read the relationship of husband and wife and normally focus on that to talk about how men and women should relate to one another. It is compared though to the relationship of Christ to his church and is an image in some sense of that. Paul tells us it is a mystery. The bond of union we have with Christ has nothing of the bodily intimacy in our physical families, our blood families, but there is a parallel. Paul uses that parallel to teach the duties of husbands and wives in marriage, but the root he is picking up is our union with Jesus Christ. That union expressed in our marriages by this statement, these two shall become one flesh. Christ prayed that we would be one with him as he is with the Father. So as a follower of Christ you are betrothed, espoused to Christ, engaged to be married to Christ, not as an individual but as a part of his church. We are still waiting for the wedding. This is the engagement period. But engagement as it is put out here has a greater strength to it, a greater binding sense to it than is common in our understanding in this part of the world today. Engagement when Paul wrote was as binding as the wedding itself. When you were engaged, if you were not faithful, it was fornication, adultery. It brought great penalties. Failure to be faithful to Christ is a breach of his covenant. It's adultery. The church is already united to Christ. We don't yet have the fullness of that union here in this part of the church here on earth. But the root, the principle is established already, established forever. And we will come into the fullness in days to come. Meanwhile we are preparing for the wedding. The Bible tells us the wedding itself will not take place until Christ's church has been prepared. So we think about preparation. How does a bride prepare for a marriage? She does everything she can to come down the aisle on that day and be beautiful in the eyes of her husband. She dresses normally at least this in our society. She dresses in a beautiful gown, flowers, get her hair done up. There's an awful lot involved in it. Those guys don't really know the half of it, I'm sure. We're preparing for our wedding to Christ, but the beauty Christ desires is the church's spiritual beauty. The church is not made fit for Christ by being filled with what the world calls beautiful people. Beautiful beauty is nice, we like that, but far, far better, the ugly people who do beautiful deeds. And that's the key. You prepare for the wedding by learning to practice Christ's works. Learning to live for Him, to live with Him. Your work, in preparation for the consummation of the church's union with Christ, is to train yourself to follow your great Lord. To prepare by reading His Word, by thinking about it, studying it, by living His Word, it's not enough just to think about it, it has to be put into practice for you to be properly prepared. And you know, we think that this is what God calls us to do, it's a very wonderful thing here for us. You may not be able to achieve worldly beauty. Those who do achieve it, it kind of fades away as we grow older. Your face, your body may not be attractive in that sense, but spiritual beauty of the highest quality can be yours. If you put your trust in Christ and follow Him, you can be a bright jewel in His sight. Now is your time to prepare for the wedding feast. So this image of the marriage supper of the Lamb calls you to look forward to that wedding feast which is to come. We see in the description of this the bride of Christ clothed in bright robes. She's made glorious in beauty. 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. Revelation 19.8. What's she beautified by? The fine linen, the clothes that Christ is looking at are righteous acts, obedience to God. That's something for all of us. We're beautified by good deeds which please God, our Lord. Elsewhere in Revelation we read that God's people are clothed in white robes. Revelation 7.13. And those robes are made white by the blood of Christ. Revelation 7.14. And to remind you that your best good works are good only as they are cleansed by Christ. Without Him the best you do is filthy rags, we're told elsewhere in scripture. You depend on Him for your beauty. You come to Him, I come to Him and we're impoverished. We're clad in filthy rags. The best things we can do are as filthy rags, the scripture tells us, and He cleanses us. He makes us clean. He provides you with your true soul for the wedding and there is no queen who has a better wardrobe, better clothing to wear in that time. The beauty the church will have on that day is shown in the figure we read in Revelation 21. The New Jerusalem, the city of God's people. The New Jerusalem is prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 21 verse 2. And what does it look like? It's a city of gold. Verse 18. It's adorned with a collection of precious stones. Verses 19 and 20. It has pearls for gates. Verse 21. We're reminded that all this is spiritual moral. This is what Christ intends for His bride's moral and spiritual beauty. That kind of beauty, that kind of wonder and loveliness in our deeds. His people, His bride perfected. The city is described as a perfect cube. No flaws. No darkness in it at all. In that day there will not be the least blemish remaining in God's people. There won't be one muddy spot on the wedding gown Christ gives you. He will make you perfect. And so we're brought, His church, to dine with Christ. 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. Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Revelation 19, 7 and 9. Elsewhere we're invited to receive Christ and to dine with Him. Here we're reminded that it's a wedding feast we have with Him. It's a celebration of the conclusion of the covenant by which the church is joined to Jesus Christ forever. It's not that there was no covenant before. The covenant was established by God before creation, put into effect in the time of creation. The condition for our receiving the blessings of the covenant was accomplished by Christ on the cross. Each of you were brought into living the reality of the covenant when you were drawn to faith in Christ. Or if you have not yet come to that point you will be brought into it when you do come to faith in Christ. But it's not complete until every one of God's people is drawn into union with Him. Peter writes of the answer to people who are saying, well what's all this, how could it be, there's a big delay, goes on and on, he doesn't come back. Peter says God is patient toward you and he's talking to God's people. He does not want any of you to perish. He's taking the time to bring all of his people together for the wedding feast, the marriage feast of the lamb. When he's done that then comes the wedding feast, the glorious full reality of the marriage of Christ and his people. Dining together will be the mark of fellowship, more so in biblical times perhaps than now, but the marriage feast marks your sharing with Christ and you share with Christ forever. We commonly make our marriage vows till God shall separate us by death and for many people that doesn't mean very much. But in that day there will be no more death. There will be no end to our blessed union with Christ. It truly is a time to rejoice and to be glad in our God our savior. We look forward to this. For the present, God has given us a visible pledge. We rejoice or should rejoice, I hope you will rejoice in the table of the Lord today as we celebrate his feast again. This table is a blessing that looks to the future. It proclaims the Lord's death till he comes. We often read from 1 Corinthians 11, 26 at the time of the Lord's Supper and that's what it does. It tells us of his death until the time of his coming to us again. It's a visible proclamation of Christ's death. His body broke and his blood poured out, but it looks forward just as much as it does back. We miss that and miss the celebration I think in doing so. It looks to the day when all that Jesus accomplished on the cross will be worked out. You order a series of books, or if you're not a bibliophile like me, a bunch of other things, whatever it may be, and you pay for it, it's now yours and you wait for it to come and you're not satisfied until every one of those things on your order has come. Isn't that right? And so it is that Christ's work is not fully seen until every one for whom he died has been drawn to him. No exceptions. God is doing it. And the Lord's Supper looks forward to the complete application of Jesus' work. Till he comes. Then we will no longer celebrate the Lord's Supper because we'll have the full reality that it represents. The wedding feast of the Lamb as we live with him forever. Christ tells us that he won't be partaking of the Lord's Supper anymore until he eats in heaven. When he instituted it, he said that. He began it for us. He began it to bring home to us his work and its meaning, but what the present meal assures us of will come when he takes us to himself and the life to come. We have the actual marriage feast of the Lamb and we partake with Christ himself. We have now is a present means of fellowship with Christ. First Corinthians 10 verse 16 we read, the cup of blessing which we bless. Is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break. Is it not the communion of the body of Christ? Communion is fellowship. God's Supper marks your fellowship with Christ and your fellowship with one another as each of you share in Christ. As you come to Christ you are joined in the most intimate union with him. God the Holy Spirit uses these signs to lift your heart and your soul to heaven where Christ is. It's a means of grace for your blessing until that time. The links you to the fullness which will come in that day when Christ comes again. Then instead of the sign, the token, you'll have the reality. Then comes the great Supper which is the wedding feast of the Lamb. And you know that title shows its inner reality of the Lord's table, the wedding feast of the Lamb and the revelation. The Lamb is the description given of Jesus when God wants to emphasize that he is the Savior who died for you, the sacrifice for your salvation. And this is the wedding feast of the Lamb, the Lord's Supper for us. He's the sacrifice. Christ who died on the cross. And so this will be the fullness of what we now have in part. The Lord's table where we will celebrate in a few minutes is a table of hope. Everyone who belongs to Christ is invited to come to this table, to claim your place in Christ, to look forward in hope to the full blessing that you experience in part now. It's a time to rejoice in that hope. It also serves as a call to any of you who do not yet follow Christ. A call from the bridegroom, from Jesus Christ to his bride. He calls you to come to him to enter into that wedding. He calls you to receive his payment for your sin, to put your trust in him so you may gather at his table now and in the life to come. And in that day, at the wedding feast of the Lamb, the whole church, the church in every age, the church in every place, people of every color, every language, every, you name it, across the globe, everyone who is part of Christ's church and ever has been, ever will be part of his church, will be gathered, joined to Christ together. Then beauty will replace all your present ugliness. There'll be no more tears. There'll be no more halting goodness. You know, you do a little bit, you sort of try to be good and you get a part way there bit perhaps, but there'll be no more of that. There'll be no more saying, I wish I hadn't done that. Then God's people, all who believe, will be gathered before him in the perfection of white robes, spiritually cleansed. It will be the city four square described in one of the old hymns. The church perfected every blemish removed in Christ, not one crooked line left. And the Lord's table points you to this. It invites you to this. It offers you this hope. Let's pray.