“Abounding Joy”

A blushing bride, stunning in the beauty of womanhood, radiant with the joy of being chosen and loved, promenades down the aisle with her father. A handsome groom fidgets nervously as he watches his “dream girl” glide gracefully to him, ready to declare her love and devotion; couldn’t be a luckier guy on earth. Friends and family watch with smiling faces; a day long anticipated coming to fulfillment in glorious celebration. What could be more joy-filled than a wedding?!

Certainly not a funeral. Even we, who celebrate the hope of the gospel and the certainty of heaven, would not classify a funeral and a wedding together. One is a celebration of new beginnings. The other is a sorrow over dead endings.

A wedding brings laughter and joy; and even the tears that flow in a wedding are tears of joy. A funeral displays soberness, and sorrow, and the tears that flow are ones of anguish and grief.

A wedding is the coming together of friends and family to celebrate that this man and this woman are being joined together. Everyone rejoices as two are made “one flesh” through their promises of faithfulness, and anticipates the fruitfulness of love that awaits the couple. A funeral is the coming together of friends and family to remember, weep, and grieve because someone very loved, very special has been torn away. The awareness of separation disturbs family tranquility, and the barrenness of life without that cherished friend or family member overwhelms.

They are definitely different things, a wedding and a funeral; and our expectations of the two events stand at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Jesus reclines with His disciples at a table in an upper room. On this night, Judas Iscariot will betray Him to the religious and civil authorities. On this night He will be dragged by rough hands from the Garden of Gethsemane and forced before the High Priest and Sanhedrin. He will be falsely accused, and wrongfully tried and convicted. On this night Jesus says, “This is my body given for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

In the upper room, the disciples are basically clueless about what Jesus is telling them, and what the night holds. Still, it is not hard to imagine that a sense of foreboding must dominate the scene. If you ask them this question, “Is this Passover meal you are observing with your Master more like a wedding or a funeral?” We can imagine in that hour they would respond it is more akin to a funeral. Who would blame them?

What if we were to field the same question, though? We are not in that hour. We have a different perspective than the disciples, the 20/20 vision of hindsight. So if we answered the same question would we describe the Lord’s Supper as a wedding or funeral?

Is our knee-jerk reaction is to say, “A funeral, of course? ” Jesus is prefiguring His death: broken body, shed blood. In a few hours, His flesh will shred under the scourge of the whip. Thorns, nails, and spear will pierce flesh, bone, and organ, causing blood and water to flow. Before the whirlwind of hours concludes Jesus will be draped on a cross, indecent, naked before all who pass, humiliated. Jesus will endure a rain of mocking and ridicule and spittle. He will struggle, fighting for air, pushing and pulling on the nails to gasp for breath. He will strain under the awful weight of the burden of our sins, our hell, until He cries, “It is finished!” and dies. Of course, it is more like a funeral; death means funeral.

Or does it? This death is unlike any other. This death makes possible a wedding. This death discovers us trapped in our brokenness and sets us free. This death uncovers our slavery to sin and death, and ransoms us, buys us back, and offers us forgiveness. This death recovers us from our hopeless captivity to all the things we can’t stop doing no matter how many New Year’s resolutions we make. This death delivers us, sets us free. Most importantly, this death comes across us in our estrangement and separation from God—the gulf we cannot bridge, our inability to make up the distance by effort or deed, our “No Way” sign on the road to God—and reconciles us. No longer are we enemies, but sons and daughters, part of the family. This death pays a debt it does not owe, because we owe a debt we cannot pay; and takes God’s enemies and makes us the Bride of Christ. You see, in the upper room, it is not a funeral. It’s a wedding.

It is a wedding ceremony that involves a broken body and shed blood, yes. Yet because of God’s saving activity through the cross and resurrection, that broken body and shed blood make us ready for a marriage ceremony, free and forgiven, overwhelmed by love, fit to walk with our Groom.

Jesus makes reference to the wedding current in the Lord’s Supper when He says He will not drink of this cup again until He drinks it with us in His Father’s kingdom. The drinking of the cup anticipates that future experience when the Bride gathers at the table with her Groom and celebrates the marriage supper of the Lamb for all eternity. We, then, participate in some way in that reality every time we take the bread and cup in hand in response to our Lord’s command to “do this in remembrance of me”. When we take communion we do more than remember dirge-like. We celebrate a marriage, one created by God for us. This is a wedding ceremony.

Covenant is the word we use to describe that marriage. Covenant is the biblical way we talk about it. When Jesus says, “This is the New Covenant in my blood,” He is saying this is a brand new marriage between God and His people.

Covenant speaks of a relationship of mutual obligation. If you think about it, covenant is an amazing concept. God, who is above all – above all powers, above all wisdom, above all of creation (moon and stars, the expanse of the universe) – would empty himself of divinity and allow himself to be crucified, in order to place you and me above all. We call that grace, that God would choose of His own free will, without any sense of compulsion, to bind himself to you and me, to set us above all. That He would look at us, knowing our every fault, weakness, and wart; seeing our every failure, fear, poor use of judgment, and sin; understanding even better than we do, the depth of our selfishness, the extent of our inability to truly love; being fully aware of our past and all the baggage we carry; that He would still come to us and say, “I would sure like to be your husband. Would you be my bride?” Wow!

God does that for us no matter what we do. Shake our fist at God. He still gives himself to us. Play the fool, be a prostitute with a bunch of other lovers; He still comes to us saying, “I would like to be your husband. Would you like to be my bride?” Can you imagine a husband who obligates himself to a wife who chooses to be an adulterer? That is grace. That is the amazing love of God. That is covenant.

Now God does love us like that, but it obviously takes two to make a marriage. We must love Him in return. Otherwise, no matter what God does, the relationship is bogus. Thus the other side of covenant is our response to the amazing love of God. We offer to God our love, loyalty, and service; otherwise it is not a marriage.

And why shouldn’t we? Why would we want to pass up a dynamic relationship with God? Good question. Let me give a good answer: because the evil one deceives us into believing that to do so is a funeral, and not a wedding. The evil one has portrayed for us, paraded in front of us, all the things we would have to give up and do without. Our dreams, our ambitions, our will, our need to be in control; we might have to give up all of that to enter into the relationship the Lord offers.

Oh, I am not sure I want to have that kind of covenant. Couldn’t Jesus be on the margins of my life? I can call Him in when I need help; send Him back out when everything is fine? Wouldn’t that be okay?

The evil one points us to the words of Jesus, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Our desires, dreams, control, and self are crucified, dead, and buried. How awful! How could God ever ask us to do that? Why would it even be necessary?

Exactly what every bride and groom says and thinks on their wedding day. How dare she or he ask me to say vows and light that unity candle? That would be misery! Does he think I am going to give up my plans for the future and act as if the marriage takes precedence over my individual dreams and goals? Who does he think he is? She has a surprise coming if she thinks I’m giving up my will, my wants. Does she really believe I will make her my focus of concern instead of “yours truly”?

Sure, there are brides and grooms who have those thoughts running through their heads or lurking in the shadows of their hearts. Where those attitudes are present, however, the ceremony may be a wedding, but the result is sure to be the funeral that is divorce.

When marriage is done well, the thought process is completely different. Instead, the bride and groom believe there is an abundance in this relationship we call marriage that is worth giving all we have and all we are. Everything is too small a price to get to spend the rest of life with that girl, with that guy. The bride and groom give themselves to one another freely and joyfully. This is the spirit of a wedding.

The prophet Jeremiah understands covenant, its cost and its joy. He reflects on covenant in three passages we want to look at together. As he does he calls us to a wedding, not a funeral.

First in 31:31-34, Jeremiah describes the relationship the Lord invites us to enter:
“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

This is the new covenant. This is what Jesus is referring to when He says, “This is the new covenant in my blood.” Forgiveness of sin, the holiness of God’s way within our hearts, intimacy with God; a brand new relationship, a new marriage. God comes in a new way to be husband to humanity. What a gift!

Jeremiah then anticipates in 50:4-5 the wedding ceremony that will crown this relationship; a time when God’s people will draw near to God to make this new covenant.

“In those days, at that time," declares the LORD, "the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the LORD their God. They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and bind themselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.”

Then from one more passage, Jeremiah 31:7-14, we have wedding photos placed before us. We find snapshots of the new covenant displayed so we might witness the joy and abundance the wedding promises and commences.

This is what the Lord says: “Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations. Make your praise heard, and say, O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel. See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son.”

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd. For the Lord will ransom Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they. They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord – the grain, the new wine and the oil, the young of the flocks and herds. They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty, declares the Lord.

Awesome! Here is a brand new marriage. The Lord binds himself to His people. God births a new covenant onto the world scene. The Lord gathers His people and delivers them from things stronger than they are and brings them into the beauty of His rest and bounty.

Did you hear how depressing the passage sounded? Did you catch the negative tone? How awful that God would act so, binding people in covenant to himself. Who would want to live in the abundance of God? Who would want to live life like a well-watered garden? I’m personally into desert, aren’t you?

Yet we have allowed the evil one to convince us that if we come to God and say, “My whole life, all that I am, all that I ever hope to be—my past, my now, my future—it’s given to you, you are Lord,” then it will be like a funeral. Brother and sister, hear the good news: we are here today to celebrate a wedding. The vows, the commitment, the covenant, they are our opportunity to enter into a relationship that will make life abundant, rich, exciting, whole.

This is our hour to renew a vow or to pledge our hearts and love for the very first time to our divine Lover. Wherever we are spiritually, this is an opportunity to be seized with joy, not a message to be heard with fear and trembling. Yes, it may cost us everything. But look at the Groom. See the love shining in His eyes. Remember all the ways He has loved us. Isn’t He worth everything? Can you imagine a more abounding joy than to pledge our hearts to Him?