The wedding feast of the lamb

10 December 2021

Series: Shabbat sermons

The wedding feast of the lamb

In Deut 24:1-4, we read; If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, 2 and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, 3 and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, 4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

In Jeremiah 3:8, we read: I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries.

In the Hebraic culture, when a man proposes to a woman, and she accepts, they are seen as married even though they have not yet officiated the marriage ceremony. The groom then goes away to his father’s house for a while and builds a home for himself and his wife. His wife continues to live at home with her parents, awaiting his return when he will come and take her to their new home, where the father of the house will officiate the wedding. The groom must await his father’s approval of the house he is building before returning for his bride. So the groom never knows when he will return, and the bride never knows; they only know it can happen at any moment and unexpectedly. (Matt 25:1-13)

If the bride is caught in adultery while the groom is away, he has a legal right to call off the engagement. She is then free to be engaged to another man, but she will always have to carry the stigma of her adultery. If she, for some reason, wishes to return to her first husband, he is forbidden to accept her as his bride.

In Jeremiah 3:8, Yehovah gives Israel a certificate of divorce because of her adultery. Israel had abandoned her husband, Yehovah, by abandoning the law of Moses and instead gone and served other gods. The law in Deut 24:1-4 forbids Yehovah to remarry her. This meant Israel would be lost forever and forever without God.

In the book of Genesis, Yehovah promises to provide Abraham with more descendants than the stars in the sky. If Israel ended up being lost forever, Yehovah would not be able to fulfill His promise to Abraham. At the same time, Yehovah had to respect His own law in Deut 24:1-14.

Yehovah’s solution is in Romans 7:3

In Romans 7:3, Paul says, “So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.”

For Israel to remarry Yehovah, Yehovah had to die a physical death to free Himself from His own law, and he accomplished this by dying on a cross for our sins. But first, He wanted to make sure His bride would know how to remain faithful to Him. So to accomplish both tasks, He sent His Son to teach us how to obey the law of Moses, to suffer and die for our sins, to be buried and resurrected so He would free us from the curse of Deut 24:1-4. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 15:24, “He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

For three and a half years of His life, Jesus taught us how to obey the law of Moses. He then went to the cross and suffered and died for our sins AND to be able to free Yehovah from the curse of the law in Deut 24:1-4. Now that Jesus had died was buried and resurrected, Israel was no longer an adulteress (Rom 7:3). She was now free to remarry. Now she could remarry the risen Christ, but remarriage to Christ meant staying faithful to Him by remaining faithful to the law of Moses.

When Jesus ascended, He says He went away to prepare a house for Israel His bride. One day He will return when His Father Yehovah has approved the house He is building for us. He will come unexpectedly, and we, who are Israel, have to be prepared at any moment. When He comes, He will take us home to His Father, and His Father Yehovah will officiate the wedding feast of the lamb.

The Bible says in Matthew 22 and 7:21-23, only those who are righteous by obeying the law of Moses will be allowed into the wedding feast of the lamb. Paul says in the book of Romans and John in the book of Revelation; we are also required to become reconciled to Yehovah by faith in the cross.

By now, you are hopefully beginning to understand how crucial the law of Moses is for our salvation. Without the law, we will have no way of telling Jesus we love Him (John 14). We will have no righteous deeds which will grant us access to the wedding feast of the lamb. And we will have no way of understanding why Jesus died for us. So, therefore, we need to do what the Bible says and protect and guard the commandments in the law of Moses.

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