AT A MARRIAGE
Alex Craig
Marriage is a divine institution. What you heard read out of that book - what the judge read today - was from the Scriptures. That has its own weight and a voice to every one of us. Marriage is a divine institution. Whatever it has become amongst men makes no difference. They will be responsible to God for that. It is a primary institution: that means that it belongs to the beginning. You may not know, but I can tell you, that what is primary with God He will never let go. Whatever marriage may become in the history of time and the history of men with all man's depravity and departure from God, God will carry His own thoughts through. His primary thoughts will go right through to the end. Time, history, make no difference so far as God is concerned, although in all that comes in between, man is responsible as to how far he honours the divine institution.
I was very glad today to be in this country to hear that read. I do not think we have that in our country. How responsible this large nation is to God for the Scriptures and for the responsibility to honour them. Now, I will give you the reason for the primary institution being divine. The state was a non-ashamed state. It says that Man and his wife were not ashamed. That cannot be said today about marriage amongst men. What shame, what degradation has come into the marriage bond! They were not ashamed. God will not let that state, that condition, go. It is primary, meaning that it will, so far as God is concerned be carried through. A Christian marriage, in measure, maintains this. That is what we have today. Our brother and sister have committed themselves to a bond - in effect a divine bond. They have committed themselves to carry it through according to God. Whatever may be the circumstances amongst men, they have decided to maintain it, to carry it through, according to God. Now that is proper to every Christian marriage and every marriage. Man may not think that, but that is the truth. Marriage is a divine institution. Man did not think about it: God thought about it. He introduced it and brought the woman to the man, as you heard read, before sin ever came into this world; marriage belongs to that era of things. Marriage was not instituted after sin came into the world, it was before. That is what I meant when I said it is a primary institution.
Now I want to show you how, when time has gone, so far as God's people are concerned and they are gone home to the courts above, there will be the marriage supper of the Lamb. I am going to be there because I belong to that. Every believer belongs there, belongs to that which has already been united to Christ. So far as Christ and His people are concerned the marriage bond has already taken place. We are not waiting for that, the marriage bond is already formed. All we wait for is the celebration and this is it - the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Lamb who suffered so much is going to be set forth. There is not a name more blasphemed than the precious name of Jesus. One day God is going to honour Him, and before He brings Him out for a thousand years in glory He is going to have this celebration and He will be set out in His preciousness. But His wife is there. We read about His wife - "his wife has made herself ready". His people constitute the wife, they are going to be there, too. There would be no celebration if she was not there. She must be there. But this is my point in reading it: it says "And it was given to her that she should be clothed in fine linen, bright and pure". That word clothed here is not only to meet the condition that has come in in connection with the shame in the marriage bond, because it says in Genesis that they were not ashamed. The clothing here is not only to meet that. In the Authorised Translation it says that she should be arrayed. I want to fasten on that word arrayed, that is to say that she is to be in every way equal to the Bridegroom - to the Lamb. He is the Bridegroom and she is the bride, only called here the wife. She is to be in every way equal for the coming out and at the moment of the celebrations. They are going to come out for a thousand years, and she must be arrayed for that. She must be suitably clothed and arrayed to have part with Him in administration of the world to come because He is already raised up and made Head to her and she shares in the headship of Christ. What a wonderful thing that she should be clothed in bright linen! There is to be a shameless position. Dear friends, we are going on to what is out of the world altogether. There will be no shame attached. God comes back to His original thought of not ashamed. Rather she will shine in her glory, and its fine linen, bright and pure, is the righteousnesses of the saints, not of God. We all partake of the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. If anyone is here never exercising faith in Christ you do not stand on the ground of righteousness. You ought to do it and do it today. But this is the righteousnesses of the saints. That is to say, it is the fruit and evidence and working out of the details of a Christian's life; all the details are coming into their own. Nothing happens in the Christian's life that is not the product of the blessed God in the way of some feature that He gathers up and is saving up in heaven. And in that day, when this celebration comes, it will be given to her, all that has been wrought out in wonderful detail through all the circumstances of life - the painful ones and pleasant ones whatever it might be. The believer looks at this whole pathway and he has that in mind. He is aiming at it all the time. It will come out and it is all precious to Christ; she is arrayed in what is wrought out down here.
Now in the second scripture it is not the idea of being arrayed; it is being adorned. This is a new scene altogether, past the millennium, past a thousand years, and there is a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and the sea exists no more. It is a new scene entirely. God is going on to a new scene and you can be sure there is no shame attached to that. God looks back to his original thought. That issue is carried through in this great matter of Christian marriage at the present time, but all in view of finally being seen in its perfection when this time comes, before the millennium and, too, when there is a new heavens and a new earth. She comes down out of heaven: "Coming down out of heaven from God as a bride adorned for her husband". There will have been a thousand years of public glory and she is still the bride - not the wife any more, it is the bride. Things are reversed with God. A woman is first the bride then the wife; in Christianity it is the wife now in all the scene of testing in which her faithfulness is required, but after a thousand years she is the bride adorned for her husband. It is for the eye of Christ. She is coming out resplendent in glory for His eye. Think of that! Are you a lover of Christ? She is a lover of Christ and she is coming out adorned, "a bride adorned for her husband". How choice that is!
Well now, that proves the point, that the thing is carried through, carried through by God. But at the present time, as our brother and sister are being married here today, there is some semblance, some reflection, some indication of what God has in mind in the marriage bond. He would have that now carried through in some way and shine in the day to come, first in view of the world to come and then in view of eternity. The bride will not be out of place, not one whit, she will be in keeping with her husband. May God bless the word.
Marriage of W.A.Moseley & M.Lown
16 December 1991