Weddings — Lawrence Chambers

Tonight, I'd like to talk to you about weddings. How about that? Everybody loves to talk about weddings, don't they? Both. The first, that couldn't be newer, could it? The very first and the very last.

That's the oldest. Well, at any rate, it's the one yet to come. Still in the future, that's right, it couldn't be any newer, could it? The first wedding we want to read about is in Genesis, and the last one is in Revelation.

So we're going to go from, as the Colored Man said, from generation to revolution. Let's turn to the first chapter of Genesis, then, please. Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26 and 7. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, created he him, male and female, created he them. Now turn to the second chapter, please. Second chapter, verse 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Now, this first wedding is a picture of the last one. And we want to get the scope of Scripture. You couldn't go to two extremes better than we are tonight.

The very first chapter of our Bibles, first two chapters of our Bibles, and then to turn to the last book, and almost the last chapter, to see the last wedding. And the Scriptures in between are going to help us understand this, that this first wedding is but, although it was real, it was genuine, it was a picture, nevertheless, or rather it was genuine, it was a real thing, but nevertheless it was a picture of that which has yet to come.

And so, we find in these verses here, that God gives Adam the power, in verse 20 of our chapter 2, He gave him the wisdom and everything, to give names to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found an helpmeet 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 bone, 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, and the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Now there's the pattern. First, man, created by the hand of God, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and then given him wisdom and understanding.

And yet, there was, out of all the other parts of creation, beautiful and complete as it seemed to be, there was not one part of it that would suit Adam's makeup, and Adam's personality, and nature. And so God, out from the very body, the flesh and the bone of Adam, while he was in a deep sleep, formed the bride of his heart, to share with him his regal place of honour, dominion, power, wisdom, and executive responsibilities over the government of the world.

He was to be the image of God. Image representing, or speaking of representation. Representing God in authority, so that where Adam went, it would be as it were God sent. When Adam spoke, it would be as it were God speaking.

He would speak and act on behalf of God. The sorrowful part of it is that the whole thing collapsed, so far as anything glorifying to God is concerned. Well you might say, if God knows everything, why did he fix it that way?

Just to prove to you, and to me, that humanly, man is incapable of pleasing God on righteous basis. That man, even under the most ideal and sublime surroundings, is incapable of pleasing God, of reaching or attaining to the standards of God's holiness by human righteousness.

It is utterly impossible, not now only, when we are in our sins, and far distant by that sin from God, but under the most wonderful circumstances of the primeval condition, in pristine beauty and ideal creatorial perfection, man, even then, with only one law to keep, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not ten, but just one, and then couldn't, please God.

It's no good, folks, if you're here tonight, trying to do the best you can, struggling with your own personality and your own problems, humanly, to curtail habits and try to be good and turn over a new leaf every once in a while.

It's no good. Give it up, my friend. You're just absolutely in a fix that you can't change the inevitable result. And sin is sin in the sight of God, and it must be judged. In one sense of the word, God does never forgive sin.

He forgives the sinner, yes, but he does never forgive sin, he must punish it. To be truly just to himself, he must punish sin. And if we don't accept the provision in the person of Jesus Christ, who bore our sins before a holy God in an acceptable manner, so that we can be forgiven if we'll appeal to him as our saviour, accept him as such, well then, if we don't, we'll have to bear our own sins and punishment due to them throughout an endless eternity.

And woe be, if you have to meet God in your sin, please don't. Please, listen to a dying man. Please don't have to meet God in your sin. It's an awful, awful prospect, and you will not be able to stand it.

It'll be your ruin for all eternity. Now, the door of opportunity to escape such an event is open wide, God's heart is open wide, and you may accept it and enjoy it. Why am I talking thus? Because I find that there are four thousand years of an interval between these early chapters in Genesis describing man and, male and female as being in the image of God and in the likeness of God.

There's four thousand years of silence about that thing. That God has never, is never able again to mention it. That man is in the image of God since that long distant period of time. And then I have to turn to the New Testament to find the thought taken up.

Has God forgotten it? No. But it has been obliterated. Man is no longer in the image of God. He cannot be the image of God in his sin. He can't represent God. He represents everything else but God. And so I find in the sixty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, for instance, that man's righteousness, the very best that this man can produce, and the woman by his side, is as filthy rags in the sight of God.

Filthy rags. The rags that are off a leper's wounds, is the thought. The stenchful, terrible rags that come from the wounds or the suffering of a leper. Oh folks, God has not done this to humiliate you, but to bring you to a sense of your own need of something far beyond the realm of the human.

You must be divinely saved. You must be righteously delivered from the dilemma in which you find yourself. And you have no power within the compass of your being with all your talents and all your gifts and all your qualifications that you may well boast in as man with man.

You can't use them for your emancipation from a condition in which you find yourself. You can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. And so you see, God has definitely put the quietus upon man's ability to righteously glorify him.

If he couldn't in the Garden of Eden, where else can he glorify God? And the New Testament concludes it most satisfactorily, it says that the man by, the natural man cannot please God. They that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Because the flesh, well, it says in the sixth chapter of this very book of Genesis, the end of all flesh has come before me. The end of it. And so it's so early in our history, the end of flesh has come before God.

That is, flesh in its totality. Flesh in all its greatness, in all its possibilities, in all its potential, its acquirements and accomplishments. Flesh at its best has come before me. I'm through with it.

The only way whereby God can deal with us again is in the person of one who is absolutely perfect. One who has honoured and glorified God to the ultimate, our blessed, blessed Saviour, gloribly to his name.

He is the one who has championed our lost cause and taken up our condition and position, or rather position anyway, as sinners before God and he's borne the punishment to it and we can be restored to God.

Through redemption, by new birth. And so I'm going to ask your attention to some scriptures in the New Testament to give us the other side of the picture for I want to spend the major portion of the evening about this great wedding that's going to be.

The first wedding, it's fallen through. Wonderful as though it started in the most ideal surroundings, the best of conditions. They didn't have to worry one bit about food. There was loads of it hanging everywhere, all around them, growing in the ground.

It was a marvellous picture of complete supply, nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. And I, as I understand vegetation, vegetable food, and they were vegetarians, why there wasn't even any cooking to do.

And wouldn't it have been wonderful for you ladies if you'd only not taken that one fruit, huh? Wouldn't that be wonderful? You'd not have another bit of cooking to do? Alright, that's exactly how it was.

But they didn't appreciate it at least that it collapsed, the whole thing. Now, in the 53rd of Isaiah, according to Bishop Lau's translation, which I'll give you now at verse 10, it says,. Yet it pleased Jehovah to crush him, that's the Lord Jesus, to crush him with affliction, when his soul shall make a propitiatory sacrifice.

You know where that was, of course, at Calvary. He shall see a seed which shall prolong his days, and the gracious purposes of Jehovah shall prosper in his hands. Sin had defeated those purposes, temporarily, but do you think for one moment that God had no resource?

Do you think for one moment that Adam's behaviour in the garden, of course that includes both of them, for they didn't have a different name, Adam and Eve, until after the fall. So Adam was their name, both of them, man and woman.

So, do you think that God, that Adam took God by surprise, in the way they conducted themselves under test in the garden of Eden? Not if you know our God, you won't think that. God was thoroughly aware, he can look down the ages and write down the history before it happened, by thousands of years.

His mind, his intellect, his understanding is limitless. He sees the very end from the beginning, open to his wisdom lies, says the poet. And so we find that wonderful fact is true. Therefore, when the book of Isaiah was written, 700 years before Jesus died, it says that it pleased Jehovah to crush him with affliction.

He wrote the history of Calvary and its results, 700 years before it took place. That's the only book in the whole world that does that, about its hero. All these old ancient so-called sacred writings, all heathen religions, they never could prophesy about Mohammed or Confucius or some of these other fellas, Buddhas and so on.

They can't prophesy about their birthplace and who would bring them into the world and about their mother and couldn't tell how he would live, his disposition, how he would live and what he ate and how he behaved and the miracles he would perform, the city in which he would be born and the place in which he would die and how he would die and what he would say while he was dying.

There's no other story of so-called religion in the world that compares with the book we are reading. And so, my friends, this is the only book of authenticity. This is the only revelation of the true God.

And so, don't let, if you're young in your schools that are being led astray and having to compare religions, one with the other and putting this one on level with the rest, in your own heart of hearts, don't you have it, don't you allow it.

This book is, there's no peer to it and the person of which it speaks is incomparable. You can't compare him with anybody else. Only by contrast can you understand his perfection. And so we find then that God prophesied long before he came that he would die in the midst of his days and by the result of his dying there would be created a seed, many, many seeds, many, many results that would continue his days here on earth.

And God's gracious purposes let us make man in our image after our likeness, prophesied or spoken of or presented to the public in the 26th verse of the first of Genesis, that that purpose would prosper.

It looks like it didn't prosper. But four thousand years of silence about it makes nothing to God. He can still carry out his plans. There is nothing that can thwart his gracious purposes. And the death of Christ came just at the right time.

In due time Christ died for the ungodly. And so we find that the death of Christ lays a righteous and holy basis upon which God can be just to himself and to his throne and yet justify ungodly people.

If he couldn't justify ungodly people then friends there was no hope because nobody is good. He doesn't say that he can justify good people. He doesn't do that. He justifies ungodly people. It's only sinners that will go to heaven.

Good people will go to hell. It's the exact opposite to what the public believes or is taught. And so we find then that the scriptures teach us various things about this wonderful process because it is a process.

God takes up material that is down deep in its sin and squalor. Dead in trespasses and sins. Unsafe friend if you're here tonight that is exactly your description though I say it with hesitancy because I don't want you to think that we're just pointing at you and finding you out and saying things at you that we were proud of it.

No my friend that's exactly where all of us were. The speaker included. We were dead in trespasses and sins. And in the sight of God we were filthy. We were unloving and unlovely and God could have nothing to do with us under those conditions whatsoever.

We could join our churches. We could say our catechisms. We could be baptized after we were born and before three or four times a year if you liked and it made no difference. We were just as filthy in the sight of our holy God at the end as we were at the beginning.

God can have nothing to do with man in the flesh of the first birth. We must be born again. The second birth is the only thing that God will begin with. And that's where we really begin to live for God.

So before that we are morally dead and death doesn't mean ceasing to breathe and ceasing to speak and ceasing to see and ceasing to work and ceasing to live. No indeed death. Why do you know that part of your being unsaved friend is already dead?

You are dead morally. As to your soul, your soul is dead. That means that you are separated from God. In a little while your body will pass through the natural processes of death and decomposition and you will be separated from the gospel.

You will be separated from the bible. You will be separated from the operation of the Holy Spirit physically. And then some terrible day if you can die in your sin you will stand before a holy God and that great white throne will be set up between heaven and earth and the heavens and the earth will flee away.

You will have nothing to stand upon but in your nudity, moral nudity before God your sins will stand out in bold relief. And he'll look to see if your name is written in the land book of life and he'll not find it.

That's merely a legal procedure to give you the benefit of the doubt should it be possible. Of course it isn't because your name will be written down and you'll never get to the great white throne if you're saved.

But being unsaved then your spirit will be consigned to the lake of fire along with your body and with your soul. And the third act of the threefold process of dying will have taken place and that will be the finality.

It will be second death. Oh don't you shudder, don't you tremble. Christians aren't you glad you're saved? And so we find that that's what God sent his son, his only begotten son. He gave everything he had.

I say reverently for it sounds terrific to say such a thing and yet he did. He gave his only begotten son. He couldn't give more. He emptied the universe of the best treasure he had and there on the cross nobody else was permitted to do the dread work.

God, Jehovah, thrust his sword into his heart, dealt with him as he would have dealt with you and me for all eternity you have trusted him and put him to an open shame. He crushed him with affliction.

But as a result having made a proficientary sacrifice he's going to see a seed which shall prolong his day and the greatest purposes of God in Genesis 1 .26 to have a seed in the image of God is going to prosper in his hand.

Freedom from Sin Through Christ’s Sacrifice

Now watch it. Let's turn to the second, well first of all the process goes through scripture right through. We want to turn to the eighth chapter of Romans first of all and see this process beginning.

Eighth chapter of Romans first verses. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The rest of the verse is not in the original text. For the law or principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the principle of sin and death.

There's the deliverance. There's where the chains are snapped. There's where that ugly picture that has been true of man from the garden of Eden down ends. Jesus takes our sinful nature on the cross and deals with it.

God, Jehovah, deals with it and puts it to death. That's where it belongs. There is God's judicial act of judgment upon you, all of us, every one of us. Saved and unsaved alike as far as that's concerned but only the saved come into the good of it.

For the law, the principle of the spirit of life in Christ. The principle of the spirit of life in Christ. This is the Holy Spirit in the character of the life principle of Christian living. Let's turn for a passage of scripture to the 20th of John at this point please.

You recall do you please that as we read in Genesis that God created man of the form man rather of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.

He came into living vitality by God's breath. That's the first creation. Now look at the second creation, the new creation. That first was called the old creation in the New Testament because it is going to pass away.

It's not going to stand forever, thank God. And our first birth brought us into the first creation, the old creation. So that the old creation person who was born the first time to my mother 62 years ago, that person belongs to the old creation and that person is an old man.

Not because he's got grey hair but because he has a nature that is thoroughly done away with by God. It's old. It has passed away. It is under the judgment of Calvary. It is put out of God's sight and the speaker is delighted that it is so.

Are you? So look in this 20th chapter of John. This is remarkable. The Lord Jesus has risen from the dead and during the interim before his ascension these are some of his words to them, to his disciples of course.

The 20th verse please. And when he had so said, peace be unto you, he showed unto them his hand and his side, gave them utter assurance that it was he, the same person but risen from the dead. The work accomplished of redemption, his prediction of his resurrection complete and true and realised.

And then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. But that's not all. Notice. Then said Jesus to them again, peace be unto you. As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this he breathed on them and said unto them, receive ye the Holy Ghost.

And that was before Pentecost. Now 8th of Romans again tells us that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free, delivered me completely from the law of sin and death. So that now sin can have no more dominion over me.

It can't change my destiny no matter how much it plays with my affection. And so as a Christian I'm secure. Alright, now then that's one of the things in the process. Let's go further. In the 2nd epistle of Corinthians please, I'll ask your attention again to a passage of scripture concerning this process of change.

Because not only are we to be born again, but after we are born again a great change must take place. The Spirit of God, listen to me. So much has been made of the Spirit of God using us for blessing to others.

My dear folks, I believe I can say earnestly and sincerely no one's more anxious to be used in the blessing of others than the Speaker. But I know one thing above everything else. And that is that the Spirit of God's got lots more to do inside this thing called me than he has in others through me.

And if he can effectively accomplish his designs of blessing and change in my soul, in my nature and give me the moral features of the Lord Jesus and relive, that I can relive that life of his to a measured degree of course.

Down here that I'll be more effective in what little I can do in the lives of others. And so you see that's what we're talking about. It's this change inside the believer that is to be carried on effectively if there's going to be any blessing.

And so out of the abundance of the heart then the mouth will speak and souls will be won to Christ not by our rhetoric, our ability, our intellect, our speech. But rather by the power of the Spirit of God who ungrieved can use the vessel that is broken and broken again.

One who is clean and usable but one who has submitted to these processes. 2 Corinthians 3 please. 17 and 18. Now the Lord is that Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, it's the same Holy Spirit, the Lord the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in Romans 8, 1 and 2.

As the same person operating here, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all with unveiled faces. If you read the context, talking about Moses having to veil his face, now it's taking that same thought.

Now we with unveiled face because Moses could go into the presence of God on Sinai and when he, though he had to veil his face because it shone with the light of the presence of God upon him and the people couldn't see that.

The glare was so great, the light, the glory was, well they couldn't approach in his presence. So he veiled his face. You remember to read if you have your paper write down, look up Exodus 34 and you'll get the account of it.

And that's what this passage is in verse 13 of this chapter is referring to, Exodus 34. But now as Christians under grace, not under Moses law, but under grace now with unveiled faces standing in the presence of the Lord.

Look what happens. With unveiled faces beholding as in a glass. What? The glory of the Lord. What happens? We are changed into the same image. There's the process. The change from what we were in our natural selves to be filled with a desire and an actual accomplishment little by little.

Filled with the characters of the Lord Jesus. Transplanted, transferred in measure to the individual believer who gives himself over to the teaching of the Spirit of God, comes under the ministry of the Spirit and who will take up the things of Christ and reveal them to us and as we behold the glory of the Lord.

Glory is excellent on display I say again. It's the excellences of his greatness. The excellences of his perfection. The excellences of his power. The excellences of his humiliation coming down from heaven to earth.

The excellences of his behaviour as a child, as a man and in his death. The excellences of his patience, his love, his grace, his kindness, his gentleness, his tenderness, his vicarious sufferings upon the cross, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, his enthronement at God's right hand.

These glories, excellences on display but taught us by the Spirit of God in the Word of God. And we are exposed like a photographic plate to these glories. We become like them. We are transferred, we are changed into the same image.

Let us make man in our image. We are changed into the same image from glory to glory, step by step. We couldn't stand it if it was sudden. And of course it's only in a small measure but brother if this is but a little, what will it be when we're in his presence?

When we get down before his feet, at his feet, when we behold his beauty in close proximity, won't we be completely transfigured into glory at his feet as the poet says. Oh what a day, brother what a day.

You may have a headache now but you'll never have a headache up there. The sight will be glorious. A marvellous picture is pointed out in the Transfiguration Mount. And there they fell down prostrate before him and saw no man save Jesus only.

You won't worry about whether mother's there or dad's there, that's just so trifling. When you think of being in the presence of the Lord of Glory, of course mother will be there if she was born again and if she isn't then you'll be perfectly of God's mind concerning her.

And so we find what a beautiful thing it is that under the ministry of the Word of God, the glory of the Lord is passed before our view. All true ministry is Christ-centered, Christ-glorifying, Christ-exalting and thus true ministry, the ministry that the Spirit of God inspires, results in a change.

We come into an auditorium like this at a certain stage of our spiritual development and if we go out in the same stage then there's been no growth. We should be different people after the hour has been struck.

Well I must hurry because we've got some more to go into to look at. So we are chained into the same image from glory to glory. Now let's take up a passage of scripture in its proper light instead of the mixed up way in which it is generally taken in the Eighth of Romans please.

Some people say well I missed the button and they had an accident. So all things work together for good. So there's nobody else in the past was a Christian, a Baptist. Oh how short-sighted some of us are.

We talk so glibly of scripture. What does it mean in verse 28 and 29? And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. Genesis 1 26.

The purpose of having men in his image. For whom he did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. That's the good thing towards which everything in your Christian life tends.

That's the objective. That's the end of the road for all God's dealings with you and me. It may be a rough road. Some of us have to suffer in the flesh. Some of us hardly know which way to turn. It seems as if the devil himself must be doing a job well and God letting him do it.

It seems that way. But brother don't you remember long ago perhaps or maybe only a short time ago in the glow of your heart delight in the things of Christ. You bowed your knees and your head and heart reverently in his presence and you said, Oh God reveal thyself to me.

Teach me more of thy blessed ways Lord Jesus. Let me understand more of this book. Bring me more into conformity to thy mind. Let me be a transliteration of thy personality in some small way that others may see thee reflected in my life.

Do you remember such desires? God does. Often our memories are short and when problems arise we've forgotten what we said on our bended knees. But God hasn't and he's carrying out his blessed design for your good and for your glory in a coming day.

His ways are deviant. His ways and methods may be different one from the other. You may think that you are the object of his well almost despising. That he seems to make you the brunt of his attack. But my friend, whom the Lord loveth he chastens.

And scourges every son whom he receiveth. And if we don't have chastening then are we bastards and not sons. So may God help us to see the silver lining to the dark cloud. It may weigh heavy on your heart just now but there's an end to the road.

And the end is glory. And you'll see the other side of the carpet then. Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle cease to fly will God unroll the canvas and show the reason why the dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.

He's planned the best for you and for me. But the way may be rugged. But it's safe. It's like that road across the sea. It was the only unthinkable ship I've ever heard of. Because Jesus was there. And so this 8th chapter of Romans and that 28th and 9th verses helps us to understand that all things, all things, excuse my long drawn out word.

But I want you to get it. All things. The rough things. The hard things. The painful things. It may be the expensive things. It may be the sharp surgeon's knife. It may be the blackness of despair and disappointment.

The frustration of purposes. The loss of loved ones. It may be a lot of things crowding in upon one's soul. And yet all things work together for good. And what is that good? That we might be brought into the image of Jesus Christ.

Think that thing through. Don't let this be the end of such meditation. But when you get home tonight, before you go to sleep, think it over. And it will console and comfort and gild the teardrops and lift the loads and comfort the heart and pour in the balm of Gilead to every precious troubled saint of God.

And so, I wish the time hadn't gone, or almost gone, but that's what we've got before us. Now I want to go to the 5th chapter of Ephesians for a passage, please. The 5th chapter of Ephesians. We just have to break that process off at that point.

You know what it says in the 1st epistle of John in the 3rd chapter. We know not what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. Why? Because we'll see him as he is. If here on earth the thoughts of Jesus' love so comfort the spirit that the pilgrims sing, what will the sunshine of his presence prove?

Ah brother, what a day. When everything will be concluded at his feet. And then it won't be the conclusion. Except for the sordid and the troubled life that we've lived down here. It'll be but the entrance into the eternal sublime presence of God and all the blessings, full, rich and rare, for every one of us to revel in and bask in and bathe in throughout the countless ages of eternity.

And you, dear Christian, will be one of us in that glory land forever. Just because Jesus died upon the cross and God accepted his sacrifice for you and me. He, God, crushed him with affliction that you might never know the affliction of the judgment of God upon sin.

The Church as the Bride of Christ

Might we well bow our heads and gratefully acknowledge it. The text of Ephesians says, 25th verse we must start, Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with a washing of water for the words, that he might present it to himself.

A glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, for that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.