Your wedding day is one of the most important events in your life. The day is full of emotion surrounded by the support of family and friends who love you. You look forward to this special day for months if not years. When the day finally arrives you hope everything will be perfect including the music, flowers, your hair, your veil, and your gown. You meticulously groom and preen yourself over and over, checking at the last possible moment for a spot or wrinkle on your dress you may have missed. You want nothing more than to present yourself as a beautiful and perfect bride when your eyes meet your Bridegroom!
Are there any of you that would dare walk down the aisle in a spotted wedding gown like in the picture posted above? I dare say, not one of us! Yet in a spiritual sense, some of us are wearing spotted wedding gowns unaware the church organ is about to play the famous song Here Comes The Bride! Is this really how you want to meet Jesus? You are not ready!
What do I mean by a spotted gown? The true followers of Christ are referred to throughout the scriptures as "The Bride Of Christ," and as followers, we believe Christ is coming for His Bride (His true Church) as promised in the Bible. She is not just any bride. Her commitment to Him from the moment of being "saved," has kept her untainted or "unspotted" from the impurities of sin she used to relish in. She willfully turns from sin. She's a spiritual virgin and maintains a deep SPIRITUAL intimacy with Jesus. Her gown is white for 3 reasons: the forgiveness and redemption of sin through Jesus' blood sacrifice on the cross, sanctification by the Holy Spirit working in her, and keeping faithfully pure for Him alone. She refuses to return and commit fornication again with the world. Ephesians 5: 26-27 says this about Jesus and His Bride, "and (he) gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or any wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless."
The Bride heeds the words in Timothy 2:19 and eagerly and purposely does not allow herself to once again engage in all sorts of ungodliness from her past life. She departs from iniquity! "Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows them that are His. And, Let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity." And she does! You see, analytically they that love God keep themselves just as a literal virgin bride keeps herself for her wedding day. Keeping oneself isn't done through one's own strength, lest one boast of good works. Rather, they desire with the help of the Holy Spirit to turn from their former life and former sins. And as His Bride, they no longer make a practice of sin and by divine assistance accomplish it!! PRACTICE is the keyword here! Christ's Bride will not regularly or repeatedly exercise herself in sins.
How does one's garment become defiled? What constitutes a spot/blemish? SIN! Many illustrations of corrupt human nature pertain to the flesh such as adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, and homosexuality, etc. Some may think the Church doesn't engage in such things, that born-again Christians just don't do those things anymore. Sadly, you'd be mistaken! Hopefully, as a professing Christian, these have no place in your life anymore. Imagine the last time you visited the grocery store and bought fruit. As an example, apples, peaches, or grapes. Did you look them over before placing them in your cart? Most of us do especially if bought individually. We look, examine, and choose the ones closest to perfection, at least without mold, spots, or rotting areas. Can fruit with bad areas still be useful if it has some spots? Yes, but only if we cut the spots out!! This is what Jesus is looking for in a Bride. Hear me out. I'm not saying you have to be perfect. I'm not saying you'll never grow weak and not commit sin. I'm saying if there are old sins you are refusing to abandon, those you willfully keep choosing to do, you are blemished! To remain "spotless" in a spiritual sense you cannot return to your former way of living. If you are a Christian and continue in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, you are PURPOSELY and WILLFULLY committing a sin. If you are a Christian and engaged in a same-sex relationship you are PURPOSELY and WILLFULLY committing a sin. If you continue to return to a bar to drink and get drunk, you are PURPOSELY and WILLFULLY committing a sin. These things should not be! You cannot continue to return to your former sins like a dog returns to its vomit or as a pig to her wallowing in the mire LEST A WORSE THING COME UPON YOU. God keeps urging me to tell the Church to cleanse herself of such things. Oh, I'd rather be like so many others who uplift and encourage you, telling you how God is love, how you can do anything and still get into heaven, how His mercy forgives those who once knew Him but have walked away for good. But I cannot! His messages are extensions of patience and endurance yet filled with warnings. He's coming soon. Rev 3:5, "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life but will confess his name before My Father and before His angels." To be "blotted out" your name must have been written in the Book of Life in the first place, right? Right? If our names, as believers, are written in the Book of Life we surely want no spot, no wrinkle, no WILLFUL or defiant sin left in our life that might get our names removed! The point here is are you still conducting your life in WILLFUL, DEFIANT, and REBELLIOUS DISOBEDIENCE? The one who willfully continues sinning after receiving the gift of God is in danger of being blotted out!
ONLY believers can also have their names blotted out. The unbelievers do not qualify under this category because they were never written in the LAMB'S BOOK OF LIFE in the first place! The names of all unbelievers are written in and judged out of the "other" books- (books plural!) The other books are namely, the law! Read Revelation 20:12 closely ... "And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books (plural) were opened. Another book (singular) was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books (plural)." True believers are judged out of ONE book (The Lambs Book of Life) and unbelievers are judged out of the other books of law (plural.) ONCE A BELIEVER'S NAME IS BLOTTED OUT, that name disappears from the list of those who are saved. Remember Jesus words, "Depart from me you who work iniquity"?? 1 John 3:9 (NIV) "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of God" -- John is telling the believers that we cannot go on willfully and purposefully sinning even though we know what God has shown us and cleansed us from. You cannot continue to sin as a drunkard, a fornicator, an adulterer, a pedophile, a homosexual, on and on. You must forsake all that. Revelation 16:15 "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watches and KEEPS his garments, lest he walks naked, and they see his shame." There is a big difference between slipping up and committing a sin due to the weakness of the human flesh, and willfully choosing to consciously continue IN sin. The entire purpose of Christianity is change ... rebirth!
Our Bridegroom is coming soon. You must be dressed and ready. Check your heart. Bring your actions in alignment with the spirit so that your garment will remain white. Believers have a dire warning in 2 Peter 2:10-21 "For if after they have escaped the pollution's of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them." Be careful not to slip back into your former habits and vices so that you not entangled therein, and overcome.
Are we not married to the Lord? Is He not the Husbandman? Are we not His Bride? Are you still looking to the world and what it offers through lusts and desires? The garment you wear tells it all. I am talking to the believers! This message is not to the unsaved! The unsaved aren't dressed in white! God's Word is to His people. I am writing with the urgency of the Spirit of God. We MUST take an evaluation of ourselves and correct what is wrong, so we, as a glorious church, not having a spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, can be holy and without blemish. Sometimes I bow my head and cry. Who will listen? Who will get it?
Until He Comes,
-Pat-
No comments:
Post a Comment